PHOTO FILE: Club Punta Fuego, Nasugbu, Batangas/THEPHILBIZNEWS
By Alithea De Jesus
It is undeniable that the tourism industry is the hardest hit during the pandemic. Since April 2020, millions of jobs were in tourism-related industries compared with the non-tourism industries.
With the reopening of the borders, international tourist arrivals started to increase and the effort of the government to ease up the restrictions that encourage local tourism resuscitated the country’s tourism industry.
Based on the report released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) this morning, July 17, it is noted that a 4.6 percent increase in the employment in tourism-related industries records 4.9 million in 2021 compared to the 4.68 million recorded in 2020. The increase of 16.3 percent is a welcome development that the Department of Tourism announced.
Meanwhile, the PSA estimates the contribution of Tourism Direct Gross Value Added (TDGVA) to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to be at 5.2 percent in 2021 from 5.1 percent in 2020.
The TDGVA for the year also amounted to Php 1,001.30 billion–a 9.2 percent increase compared with Php 917. 20 billion in 2020.
The DOT sees growth as encouraging development and a positive indicator of the government’s initiatives to stimulate the industry in its continual recovery.
The Department is hopeful that with the country’s more lenient restrictions for local travel and the recent removal of the test-before-travel requirement for boosted foreign tourists, the growth in tourism industry figures will be sustained this year. In particular, the DOT is optimistic to see an increase in the employment in tourism related-industries, as the resumption of livelihood of tourism workers remains one of the agency’s priorities.
Based on the DOT’s data, tourist arrivals to the country continues to see an upward trend, tallying 682,949 tourist arrivals as of 15 June 2022.
