India a major tourist market this year - DOT

Metro Manila, Philippines - Indian tourists will be a major target market group this year as the number of Chinese visitors have declined, the Department of Tourism (DOT) said on Wednesday, Jan. 22.

Citing data from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Secretariat, Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco said 79,000 visited the Philippines out of over five million Indians travelers last year.

“Not very big,” Frasco told a forum in Manila. “And so, we are aggressively advocating for liberalized policies in terms of visa issuance for the Indian market coming into the country.”

She said the figure marked a 12.8% growth from 2023 arrivals. Wedding and diving events were popular to Indian visitors, she added.

Frasco said joint working group meetings and business missions have been set to prepare for the possible visitor influx. She did not set a target for 2025 pending measures to improve connectivity and liberalize visa processing.

“The interest of Air India is quite robust and they are now in the process of documentary compliance with regulatory bodies in the Philippines,” she told reporters in a chance interview.

“I hope the flights from India can be mounted within the first semester of this year, but that is entirely dependent on their compliance with documents as well as requirements by the CAAP (Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines) and the CAB (Civil Aeronautics Board),” she added.

In a statement, the DOT said it hopes Air India will soon connect Indian cities directly to Manila, Boracay, Clark, and Cebu. While connectivity to New Delhi is through Manila, there are no direct flights between the two capitals.

Frasco held a bilateral meeting with Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Indian minister of culture and tourism, on the sidelines of the 28th Meeting of the ASEAN Tourism Ministers on Sunday.

Shekhawat said that the two countries share a “long, long, long heritage,” thanking his counterpart for the “initiations” made by Manila to create more tourism potential.

“The number of tourists inflow to both the countries is going to increase, and certainly, the share of the total number of tourists, Indian tourists visiting to the ASEAN countries, Philippines deserves much, much more,” Shekhawat told Frasco, according to a DOT release.

Recovering Chinese market

Frasco earlier reported only around 300,000 Chinese tourists visited the country in 2024, far from the projected two million. The shrink resulted in only 5.9 million foreign arrivals last year instead of the 7.7 million target. 

In a briefing aired over government channel PTV, Frasco said “nobody could have anticipated that geopolitics would ultimately seep into arrivals from China” amid the suspension of electronic visas to the East Asian giant.

Recently, Philippine authorities arrested a Chinese national for alleged spying, among other tensions such as the disputed West Philippine Sea.

“These incidents pertain to national security issues, which are beyond the purview of the Department of Tourism and beyond the purview of tourism in general,” Frasco said during the forum.

“To our mind, tourism transcends politics, geopolitical issues, race, culture, differences in opinion, and the like, and which is why tourism is a very powerful force for unity as well as cultural understanding and people-to-people exchange,” she said.

“So we continue to advocate to recover the Chinese market as far as tourism is concerned,” she added.

‘Love the Philippines’ campaign to stay

Meanwhile, Frasco said the DOT would continue to push for the “Love the Philippines” brand campaign after seeing traditional media placements and social media engagement in international channels in various countries.

“We have found that its effectiveness is quite high because we are seeing increases in market recovery as far as particular markets are concerned, these include Europe as well as the Middle East,” the tourism chief said. “So it's very important that we sustain the presence and top of mind positioning of the Philippines in terms of marketing in these countries.”

Frasco said the DOT would capitalize on the direct connectivity to Europe through a “focused marketing campaign” in France and nearby countries, while her agency also saw “very, very encouraging growth” from the Middle East.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has directed his Cabinet to restore around P400 million to DOT’s funding to sustain its campaign for 2025, sourcing from the chief executive’s contingency fund, according to a Malacañang news release.

The tourism department only received P100 million for branding, marketing, and promotion, lower than the P200 million in 2024, and P1.2 billion in 2023.

“We will continue our placements in the traditional, social media, as well as various channels all over the world,” Frasco said of the P500 million funding.

“We will further expand our presence and really double down on the market presence of the Philippines especially in our top markets,” she added.