DUBAI — Philippine Department of Tourism (PDOT) announced an increase of 10% on tourist arrival in Boracay islands for the first month of 2018.

Boracay received a total of 186,893 tourists from Jan. 1- 31 of this year; 17,050 higher than those the island welcomed in January 2017.

Of the total tourists recorded in the first month of this year, foreign tourists listed were 125,910; while domestic tourists were 55,216; and the Overseas Filipinos were 5,767.

The said number of tourists generated a total of P5,948,343,105.60 $114,505,604.78) in tourism receipts; wherein P4,962,853,459.20 ($95,534,929.09) came from the foreign tourists and Overseas Filipinos; and P985,489,646.40 ($18970675.69) were from the domestic tourists.

Meanwhile, Chinese and Korean tourists remain the top foreign visitors of the island in January this year with 54,615 and 44,458 arrivals, respectively.

Also included in the top 10 foreign visitor list were nationals from United States of America with 2,567 arrivals; Russia 2,360; Australia 2,107; Taiwan 1,915; United Kingdom 1,820; Malaysia 1,385; Saudi Arabia 1,351; and Canada 1,205.

The Department of Tourism-Boracay said that the island is targeting 17 international cruise ship calls in the first six months of the year that could bring in a total of 58,000 tourists in the resort island.

The Philippines has seen the consistent growth in tourist arrivals from the Middle East. In 2017, the Philippines received a total of 89,932 tourists from the region. Tourist arrivals from Saudi Arabia and UAE, the two largest markets out of the region for the Philippines, reached 54,716 and 16,399 respectively.

The PDOT aims to achieve 100,000 tourists from the Middle East by the end of 2018 and proactively developing strategic partnerships with key stakeholders in the Middle East to capture a sizeable percentage of its high-yield tourist market. — SG