Lower budget allocations for tourism programs and projects, as well as strict policies towards foreign visitors entering the Philippines, could remain as setbacks for the country’s tourism, the Department of Tourism warned.
In an interview over the program Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon on People’s Television Network (PTV) aired last January 10, 2025, Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia-Frasco revealed that the funding for the agency’s branding and promotion programs under the General Appropriations Act (GAA) for 2025 was slashed from what it proposed under the National Expenditure Program (NEP) for this year.
“The most affected change from NEP to GAA would be the budget for branding and promotions of the Philippines to our markets all over the world,” Frasco said. The DOT had proposed around P500 million NEP but was only granted P100 million under the GAA.
She added the DOT suffered a hefty budget cut for its branding program, from P1.2 billion in 2023 to only P200 million in 2024, equivalent to a reduction of P1 billion.
Lower budget for marketing and promotions would definitely test the DOT’s sustained efforts to make the Philippines more attractive to international visitors, according to Frasco.
Not only the DOT’s “Love the Philippines” tourism campaign will be affected, but also “our destinations itself that will ultimately be the recipients of promotions being done by the DOT,” she added.
She pointed out, “We anticipate it will affect tourism arrivals considering the lesser opportunity that we have to market the Philippines, the lesser chances there are to reach as many markets or many people as we wish.”
According to data from the DOT, the Philippines received a total of 5,949,350 international visitors and overseas Filipinos in 2024.
While it was higher by 9.15 percent than the 5,450,557 foreign tourists in 2023, the 2024 figure was lower than the DOT’s projection of 7.7 million tourist arrivals under the National Tourism Development Plan (NTDP) 2023-2028.
Visa policy
Frasco further highlighted the “challenges that the Philippines faced which then led to our numbers not reaching the target projections for 2024.”
For one, “nobody could have anticipated that geopolitics would ultimately seep into arrivals from China, considering that the electronic visa or e-visa for the Chinese market were suspended,” she said.
The DOT projected over 2 million Chinese tourists in 2024, but their arrivals reached a measly 300,000.
From the 1,743,309 travelers from China that visited the Philippines in 2019, the DOT recorded only 170,432 in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic restricted travel, to a plunge of 9,674 in 2021, 39,627 in 2022, 263,836 in 2023, and 312,222 in 2024, based on tallies from the DOT.
The suspension of the e-visa policy for Chinese travelers was in stark contrast to the policies of our ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) neighbors that grant free visa or visa upon arrival.
Also, the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) has pledged to construct more cruise ports across the country, she added.
However, Frasco expressed concern over the reduction of budget allocations for the construction of more tourism roads for 2025.
“For 2024, P15 billion was devoted for construction and rehabilitation of tourism roads, but for 2025 it stands at only P6 billion,” she said.
