Foreign tourism on the rise
IMMIGRATION Commissioner Norman Tansingco said foreign tourism is on a rebound.
Tansingoco’s statement came after Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco reported more than four million foreign visitors from January to September this year.
Tansingco said from January to August this year, the BI has processed a total of 8,117,286 Filipino and foreign passengers.
Prior to the pandemic, the agency recorded more than 11M arrivals during the same period, a far cry from the 2,873,423 recorded during the same months in 2022.
“We are getting there,” said Tansingco.
“The significant increase in arriving passengers shows that tourism and international travel is already on the rebound,” he stated.
Tansingco added that the agency also supports the efforts of the DOT in making things faster and more simple for arriving passengers, to give them a great experience from the moment they arrive in the country.
“We are procuring more e-gates for faster immigration processing. Through technology, we can work around the limited space that we have at the airports and improve passenger experience,” he stated.
Tansingco said the arrivals could reach more than 4 million for the last quarter of the year.
