Boracay Island rakes in P32 billion in 2022

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

Increased tourist arrivals after pandemic restrictions were significantly relaxed worked wonders for Boracay Island last year as it reopened to domestic and foreign tourism, bringing in billions in tourism earnings, according to the Department of Tourism-Region 6’s (DOT-6) latest data.

The island raked in P32,200,533,600 in tourist receipts in 2022, on the backs of over 1.75 million tourist arrivals.

While DOT-6 did not provide data for the tourist receipts in 2021, it indicated a 432.21 percent increase in the number of tourist arrivals in that year (330,622).

Tourist receipts rose the most in May 2022 (P3.68 billion), followed closely by June (P3.54 billion), while the lowest was in January (P655.12 million), likely owing to existing pandemic restrictions at the time, as evidenced by succeeding rising receipts in February (P1.48 billion) and March (P2.75 billion).

Tourism receipts are closely linked by DOT in its press releases to visitor spending, but the United Nations defines “international tourism receipts” as the “expenditure of international inbound visitors including their payments to national carriers for international transport, [as well as] any other prepayments made for goods [or] services received in the destination country.”

The DOT computes tourist or visitor receipts using other tourism-related data, including Visitor Arrivals, Average Length of Stay, and Average Daily Expenditure.

Similar to the tourist receipts, the most number of arrivals in the island was recorded in May (201,368), followed closely by June (193,650), which was a stark jump from January 2022 (35,799) and February (80,882).

Domestic tourism remained the main driver of tourism reception in the island, with an estimated 1.59 million arriving in Boracay Island in 2022.

This group is classified by the DOT to include both Filipino and foreign residents, but the data indicated that all of the visitors to the island last year were Filipinos.

This excludes “Overseas Filipinos”, whom the data set considers as Filipinos who are legal residents of other countries, which were at 38,826.

The remaining 132,687 were foreign tourists, with the top five contributors to this number coming from South Korea (50,313), United States (19,154), Australia (6,953), United Kingdom (6,882), and Canada (3,772).

Other countries and territories logged by the DOT-6 in the 2022 Boracay arrivals data include:

–          Germany (3,635);

–          China (3,336);

–          Japan (2,636);

–          Singapore (2,556);

–          India (2,354);

–          Israel (2,104);

–          Saudi Arabia (2,021);

–          Russia (1,892);

–          France (1,782);

–          Malaysia (1,509);

–          The Netherlands (1,324);

–          Taiwan (1,218);

–          Ireland (1,193);

–          Switzerland (1,122);

–          United Arab Emirates (1,013);

–          Italy (1,008);

–          Norway (846);

–          Spain (856);

–          Hong Kong (774);

–          Vietnam (765);

–          Indonesia (722);

–          Sweden (722);

–          New Zealand (631);

–          Denmark (570)

–          Thailand (541);

–          Austria (513);

–          Belgium (498);

–          Poland (465);

–          Brazil (334);

–          South Africa (320);

–          Kuwait (289);

–          Portugal (248);

–          Colombia (175);

–          Nepal (156);

–          Finland (154);

–          Myanmar (151);

–          Greece (145);

–          Pakistan (144);

–          Bahrain (111);

–          Mexico (111);

–          Papua New Guinea (96);

–          Bangladesh (90);

–          Iran (84);

–          Argentina (81);

–          Sri Lanka (59);

–          Cambodia (46);

–          Guam (43);

–          Egypt (42);

–          Nigeria (34);

–          Brunei (31);

–          Luxembourg (27);

–          Peru (21);

–          Serbia and Montenegro, combined (18);

–          Laos (13);

–          Venezuela (11); and

–          Jordan (5).

The Commonwealth of Independent States, or members of the former United Soviet Socialist Republics, and the Pacific island country of Nauru, were also on the list, but both logged 0 visitors.

The total foreign tally excludes those who are from other unspecified countries and who are from unidentified countries of residence (3,968).