The Philippines has been ranked as the 13th tourism powerhouse in the world among the top 30 performing countries.
The South East Asian nation was identified as a top performer in the 2018 World Travel & Tourism Council’s (WTTC) “Power and Performance Report” on 185 countries.
The WTTC report indicated that the Philippines recorded “absolute growth” on its travel and tourism sector performance from 2011 to 2017.
Philippine tourist destinations have been acknowledged worldwide as ideal spots for vacations with many offerings including the world famous Boracay island, Malapascua dive spots, and the Filipino-brand infectious happiness.
The country also ranked 15th in terms of “performance” or based on its compound annual growth rates between the period in WTTC’s four indicators.
Here are the Philippines’ indicator ranks on the WTTC report:
- The Philippines ranks 8th among states that have seen the largest growth in travel and tourism’s contribution to GDP from 2011 to 2017, with USD66.3 billion share in 2017 alone.
The WTTC noted that the Philippines is “the only country” in the top ten that is in both “power” and “performance” rankings of GDP contribution.
- The Philippines reached the top 30 in both size and speed of visitor export growth.
The Philippines landed on the 21st spot for posting a 3.7 percent increase in the last seven years in terms of visitor export growth, or the spending by foreign visitors in a country. In 2017, WTTC said the country earned USD7.5 billion from international visitor spendings.
As in the first two indicators, the Philippines is in both the power and performance league of domestic spending.
- The Philippines placed sixth in the power rankings for having USD45.7 billion in last year’s domestic travel and tourism spending, an “actual growth” of USD26.2 billion from 2011 to 2017, according to WTTC.
This makes the country third among 185 states in terms of highest annual growth rate.
In 2017, the tourism industry alone accounted for 12.2 percent of the Philippines’ GDP, a figure which exceeds the 10-percent share of GDP the government targeted for 2022.
In the same year, at least 96.7 million domestic tourist arrivals were recorded, exceeding the 86.2 million target set for 2022. A total of 6.62 million international arrivals in 2017 were seen, an 11.3-percent increase from 2016, she added.
