East Asia makes up half of tourist arrivals to Philippines from Jan to April

East Asia countries make up 49.2 percent of total tourism visitors to the Philippines for the months of January to April 2016, officials said Friday.

Total visitor arrivals for the first four months of the year reached 2,073,851, up by 14.25 percent over the same period in 2015, according to the department of tourism.

Benito Bengzon, Jr., undersecretary for tourism development, said by regional grouping, the East Asian region is the biggest source of arrivals with 1,020,434 tourists, accounting for almost half of the total visitor volume.

South Korea is still the biggest source of tourists with a total of 481,596 arrivals from January to April 2016, about 23 percent of the total arrivals.

With 303,951 visitors, the U.S. was the second biggest source of tourists, constituted almost 15 percent of total arrivals.

China came in the third place, with 238,523 tourist arrivals, an increase of 88.86 percent from the same period 2015.

Japan placed fourth, contributing 183,620 visitors or 8.85 percent of the total inbound traffic. The 5th major market was Australia with 88,496 arrivals, comprising 4.27 percent of the total.

Bengzon said that the estimated tourism receipts in the period is 86.66 billion Philippine Pesos (1.86 billion U.S. dollars), an increase of 12.34 percent compared to the same period last year. Endit