The Philippines Department of Tourism says the country might outperform this year’s target in terms of tourist receipts, as visitor arrivals so far this year have been exceeding expectations.

“With this upward trajectory of the performance of Philippine tourism under the [President Ferdinand] Marcos administration, what we anticipate is that, in the same way that we were able to exceed our targets as far as visitor receipts are concerned for 2023, we would be able to achieve the same feat for 2024,” said on Tuesday the Secretary of Tourism, Christina Frasco (pictured in a file photo).

She was speaking at discussion sessions following the President’s State of the Nation Address on Monday.

The Philippines aims to draw 7.7 million foreign visitors this year after exceeding its arrival goals for 2023.

The country received an aggregate of 5.45 million international visitors in full-year 2023, with 91.8 percent being foreigners.

In the year to July 19, the Philippines had received just above 3.32 million international visitor arrivals, according to official data.

The data also showed that tourism earnings from inbound visitors stood at PHP282.17 billion (US$4.83 billion) in the first six months of 2024, 32.8-percent higher than in the prior-year period.

On Tuesday, Secretary Frasco said however that regarding visitor arrivals, “unless and until we are able to fully ease the convenience of coming into the Philippines especially as far as e-visas are concerned, it does remain a challenge”.

The official said President Marcos had directed her department to fully implement the e-visa programme, in cooperation with the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Bureau of Immigration.

Ms Frasco said 2023 was a phenomenal year for the country’s tourism sector, adding that the industry contributed around PHP3.36 trillion to the economy in terms of international and domestic visitor receipts.