The Philippines is refocusing its tourism efforts for 2025 in order to woo tourists from Europe, India, and the highly-coveted Middle East luxury market.

Measures related to this are meant to compensate for the low number of Chinese tourist arrivals in 2024.

The Philippine Department of Tourism (DOT) recently reported that the low turnout of Chinese arrivals which totalled at just over 300,000 was one of the factors that kept the country from hitting its 2024 arrivals target.

To mitigate this, tourism secretary Christina Frasco said: “Visa liberalization is critical. And so, with the challenges that we are facing pertaining to the Chinese market, we are now looking at India.”

Frasco added that the DOT will ramp up initiatives to tap into the Indian outbound market, of whom five million travelled to Southeast Asia in the past year, though only 79,000 came to the Philippines.

Considering other key markets

Furthermore, the DOT will continue and ramp up its ongoing marketing efforts in Europe and the Middle East.

Frasco remarked that the department saw increased market recovery in the region as well as Europe, possibly due to the global Love the Philippines campaign.

She said: “As far as the Middle East is concerned, we’re seeing very, very encouraging growth, with recovery rates averaging from around 500 percent. Qatar, for example, is now recovered at over 800 percent, so we’re also going to be quite aggressive in terms of marketing to that region, even as we continue our aggressive marketing strategies in Asia and the ASEAN.”

In order to draw in European tourists, on the other hand, the DOT will conduct a focused marketing campaign in France and neighbouring countries to capitalise on the new Manila-Paris direct flights by Air France.

Amid new measures to attract other markets, Frasco said the agency would continue to advocate to recover the Chinese market as far as tourism is concerned and ensure that the Philippines remains a top-of-mind destination to travelers.

Talks, she said, are in progress with the Department of Foreign Affairs and relevant agencies to relax the visa policies for the Chinese.