2.6-M tourist arrivals seen by DOT in 2023

by Betheena Unite

The government aims at least 2.6-million international tourist arrivals next year, Malacañang said.

TOURISTS enjoy the sunset at world-famous Boracay Island in Malay town, Aklan province. (Tara Yap)

“For next year, the DOT (Department of Tourism) said it targets 2.6 million international tourist arrivals in a low scenario, and 6.4 million in a high scenario,” the Palace said in a statement on Wednesday, Dec. 28. 

According to the department’s report to President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., some 2.4-million foreign tourists flocked to the country this year.

The tourism department also spelled out its plans and programs for 2023, with its major thrust focusing on connectivity, convenience, and e(Quality).

These initiatives are under the DOT’s Seven-Point Agenda aimed at improving tourism infrastructure, establishing cohesive digitalization and connectivity, enhancing the country’s overall tourism experience and equalizing product development.

To improve connectivity, the department said it will support local government-initiated tourism infrastructure, open up Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA) properties to development through public-private partnerships (PPPs), develop Cruise Tourism involving at least 136 ports of call in over 40 islands, conduct regional travel fairs, develop tourism circuits and continue convergence with tourism-enhancing government agencies.

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The DOT is also looking to improve convenience by establishing tourism information desks and tourist rest areas, enhancing the Filipino brand of service excellence, and improving the accreditation standards to ensure the competitiveness of the Philippine tourism sector.

Under its e(Quality) initiative, the DOT will enhance the Philippine Tourism Brand campaign, finalize and approve the National Tourism Development Plan 2023-2028, launch the Philippine Experience Program and develop Overwintering packages.

The tourism department also plans to open Mindanao for tourism and promote Halal tourism, conduct Philippine national job fairs, and expand the tourism opportunity markets.

Philippines must be ‘very cautious’ over travelers from China —minister

 

By

 Reuters

 -

 December 29, 2022 - 9:11 AM Undated photo showing foreigners having their passports checked by the Philippines' immigration officers in an airport. (The STAR/Rudy Santos)

MANILA — The Philippines should be “very cautious” when receiving inbound travelers from China, which is grappling with a sharp rise in COVID case numbers, the Philippine transportation minister said on Wednesday.

The Southeast Asian country could impose measures like testing requirements on visitors from China, but not an outright ban, Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista told reporters.

— Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty

Global alarm grows over China's Covid surge

By Agence France-Presse

December 29, 2022

Beijing: The United States is the latest in a growing number of countries to impose restrictions on visitors from China after Beijing abruptly removed a major impediment to overseas travel despite surging Covid cases at home.

Hospitals across China have been overwhelmed by an explosion of Covid cases following Beijing's decision to lift strict rules that had largely kept the virus at bay but tanked its economy and sparked widespread protests.

On Monday, the country said it would bring an end to mandatory quarantine on arrival -- prompting many jubilant Chinese citizens to make plans to travel abroad.

In response, the United States and a number of other countries announced they would require negative Covid tests for all travelers from mainland China.

"The recent rapid increase in Covid-19 transmission in China increases the potential for new variants emerging," a senior US health official told reporters in a phone briefing.

Beijing has provided only limited data about circulating variants in China to global databases, the official said, and its testing and reporting on new cases has also diminished.

The US move came after Italy, Japan, India and Malaysia announced their own measures in a bid to protect against importing new Covid variants from China.

Beijing has hit out against "hyping, smearing and political manipulation" by the Western media concerning its Covid response.

"Currently China's epidemic situation is all predictable and under control," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a briefing Wednesday.

China still does not allow foreign visitors, however, with the issuance of visas for overseas tourists and students still suspended.

But the lifting of mandatory quarantines sparked a surge in interest in overseas travel by Chinese citizens, who have been largely confined to their country since Beijing pulled down the drawbridge in March 2020.

Italy Wednesday said it would make coronavirus tests for all visitors from China mandatory.

The measure was "essential to ensure the surveillance and identification of any variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population", health minister Orazio Schillaci said.

France's president, too, said it had "requested appropriate measures to protect" its citizens, with Paris noting it was closely monitoring "the evolution of the situation in China."

The European Commission is set to meet Thursday to discuss "possible measures for a coordinated approach" by EU states to the explosion of Covid cases in China.

Bodies piling up

On the frontlines of China's Covid wave, hospitals are battling surging cases that have hit the elderly and vulnerable hardest.

In Tianjin, around 140 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of the capital Beijing, Agence France-Press visited two hospital wards overwhelmed by patients sick with the virus.

Doctors are being asked to work even if they are infected, one said.

FP saw more than two dozen mostly elderly patients lying on gurneys in public areas of the emergency department, and at least one dead person being wheeled out of a ward.

"It's a four-hour wait to see a doctor," staff could be heard telling an elderly man who said he had Covid.

"There are 300 people in front of you."

China's National Health Commission last week said that it would no longer release an official daily Covid death toll.

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