Again more fun in the Philippines
The Philippines do have a problem. Thy expect 4.2 millions of tourists and want to achieve 12 million visitors in 2016. But there are 2 big competitors: Thailand and Malaysia.
And above figures are not the real ones. Philippine immigration counts any foreign passport owner as a tourist. This is why above figures also include business travelers and home coming Filipinos with a foreign passport. Roughly you can reduce them by a million per year.
But: It’s more fun in the Philippines!
strong
That explains a lot of the funny tourist statistics I have seen! I would say that if they count every foreign passport entry as a tourist, they are over counting by at least fifty percent!
There has always been a lot of wishful thinking in these numbers. The hotels here in Cebu have been doing better, but many of the new guests are Korean and Chinese, who are here mostly for some kind of business or just shopping. Even the PRA statistics are overly optimistic. There are currently only about 3000 people in the country on the SRRV program, and most of those are also Korean and Chinese. Europeans, Canadians, Australians and Americans make up only about 10 percent.