The country’s tourism receipts reached PHP100 billion while travelers visiting the Philippines ballooned to over 2 million this year, the Department of Tourism (DOT) said Tuesday.

Latest DOT data showed a total of 2,025,421 visitors arrived as of November 14 since borders reopened last February 2022.

Majority of the arrivals or 1,487,343 are foreign tourists, while 26.57 percent or 538,078 are overseas Filipinos.

An estimated PHP100.7 billion in tourism revenue was also generated from the February to September 2022 arrivals alone, posting a 1938.14 percent increase from the PHP4.94 billion receipts from the same period last year.

“Our latest figures have reached well beyond the 1.7 million tourist projections of the DOT. This goes to show that there is such a huge demand for travel into our beautiful country and that the Marcos administration’s prioritization of tourism is placing our country on the right track to recovery,” Tourism chief Christina Frasco said.

“We therefore must meet this with the continued implementation of enabling mechanisms that will convey not only the country’s openness to welcome more tourists but also conduciveness to tourism business and livelihood opportunities for our fellow Filipinos,” she added.

The United States is still Manila’s top source market this year, with 385,121 visitors, followed by South Korea and Australia with 285,583 and 96,297, respectively.

Landing on the fourth and fifth spots are Canada with 89,248 and the United Kingdom with 77,267.

Other countries that made it to the top 10 list of countries with the highest number of tourists to the Philippines are Japan with 75,564, India with 41,292, Singapore with 39,801, Malaysia with 35,128 and Vietnam with 32,970. (PNA)