The Philippines should tap other sources of tourists to compensate for the reduction in Chinese tourist arrivals, a top industry official said.
Benito Bengzon, executive director of the Philippine Hotel Owners Association, said in a panel discussion at the 48th Philippine Business Conference at the Manila Hotel, stressed this point amid dwindling arrivals of Chinese tourists.
Bengzon, a former undersecretary of the Department of Tourism, noted that the Chinese tourist has been practically “shut off the tap.”
In the latest report of the Department of Tourism, the agency reported of 1.7 million total foreign visitors coming in the country for the first 10 months. The country's top five source markets are the United States, South Korea, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.
But Bengzon pointed out that Chinese tourists accounted for more 1.7 million of the 8.2 million total tourist arrivals in 2019.
Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco recognized the significant contribution of the People’s Republic of China as a major tourism source market of the Philippines.
Prior to the pandemic, China was the country’s second top source market ranking close next to South Korea. In 2019 alone, 1,743, 309 million Chinese visited the Philippines.
Currently, China has not yet reopened its borders to outbound leisure travel of its own nationals cognizant of its present outbound restriction to its citizens. Thus, it registered only 17, 454 visitors to the Philippines in 2020 and 6,615 in 2021. To date, the DOT reported there were only 23,482 Chinese tourists that arrived in the country.
Bengzon stressed the need to go back to pre-pandemic levels and find out how to compensate for the reduction in the movement of key markets, particularly China to 2019 when the country was still attracting 1.7 million Chinese tourists.
“And right now you practically shut off the tap. So how do you compensate for that?,” he said.
Certainly, he said, there is still a lot of things that need to work on. “Still a long way to go,” he said.
“We have to start looking at other markets,” he urged noting that Thailand and Malaysia have been very aggressive. These ASEAN countries are shifting their marketing efforts, to the Indian markets.
“These are the things that we as an industry have to collectively address," he said.
“We have to basically level up and also compete with our other ASEAN neighbors like Thailand, which is attracting a lot of tourism dollars,” he added.
According to Bengzon, the current hotel occupancy rate is between 60-80 percent.
The industry though is thankful that President Ferdinand Marcos has identified tourism as a major economic driver, Bengzon said.
Although still a long way to go back to the 8.2 million foreign tourist level in 2019, Bengzon said the tourism industry in general and more specifically, the hotel industry, is in a better place. “We’re seeing signs of recovery. The numbers are certainly better than that of 2021 and 2020,” he said.
The prospects are there, he said citing that investments in hotels are still very attractive. One interesting thing happening also in the hotel business is the presence of new generation of travelers, new preferences and new behavior.
These new developments, however, also put some challenges on the developers now as they try to find out what kind of hotel facilities configurations, amenities the new generation of travelers will be looking for.