Foreign tourist arrivals fell by 84% in 2020

Foreign tourist arrivals declined by 83.97 percent last year due to travel restrictions caused by the pandemic, according to the Department of Tourism. Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat said in an online press conference on Tuesday that due to entry restrictions, the country received only 1,323,956 foreign visitors from January to December 2020 compared with 8,260,913 in the same period in 2019. This resulted in the 83.12 percent decline in revenue from inbound tourism to P81.40 billion from P482.16 billion in 2019, Puyat said. —Tina G. Santos