Philippines travel, tourism sector gets recognition for economic growth

MANILA, Philippines — The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) is commending the Philippine travel and tourism sector for its significant growth in recent years, emphasizing its large contribution to the economy.

Based on results from the WTTC’s Benchmarking report, it said the travel and tourism sector was the largest sector in the Philippines last year, contributing $82 billion to the country’s economy or contributing nearly 25 percent share to total GDP.

“As we know and is now reaffirmed by this benchmarking research, the travel and tourism sector is key for the country’s economy, underpinning much of spending and supporting millions of jobs,” WTTC president and chief executive officer Gloria Guevara said.

“The industry has experienced incredible growth over the last nine years and WTTC commends the Philippines government for recognizing the importance of travel and tourism as a driver of economic growth and for their strategy in spreading the benefits of the industry across the country,” she said.

The ‘benchmarking’ study from WTTC, compares the industry’s economic impact to eight other key sectors (agriculture, mining, health, automotive manufacturing, retail, financial services, banking and construction), across 26 countries and 10 world regions.

On the global front, the travel and tourism sector generated $8.8 trillion, accounting for a 10.4 percent share of the global GDP in 2018.

It added that this was 1.4 times higher than agriculture (7.7 percent contribution), 1.5 times higher than banking (7.1 percent contribution) and automotive manufacturing (6.8 percent contribution) and 1.7 times higher than mining (six percent contribution).

“Among those analyzed, travel and tourism was the fastest growing sector in 2018, increasing 3.9 percent, ahead of automotive manufacturing (3.7 percent) and health (3.3 percent), and higher than the global economy growth rate (3.2 percent) for the eighth consecutive year,” it said.

“Strong growth in travel and tourism is driven by the continued rise in the number of middle-class households, solid growth in global consumer spending, low unemployment rates, continued rebound from security threats, currency depreciation and visa relaxation in several countries around the world,” the WTTC said.

The report said the travel and tourism’s contribution to employment in 2018 was 26.4 percent ahead of both retail and construction at 20.4 percent and 15.7 percent respectively, and only just behind agriculture (31.1 percent).

In addition, the WTTC’s benchmarking report said travel and tourism contributes 319 million jobs (10 percent of all jobs) to global employment, ahead of financial services (9.1 percent) and health (7.4 percent).

The Philippine Statistics Authority earlier reported that the tourism sector contributed a 12.7 percent share in the country’s GDP in 2018 at P2.2 trillion. This is already above the Department of Tourism 10 percent GDP contribution target for 2022 under the National Tourism Development Plan.

Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat said the tourism sector plans to release an adjusted target later this year.

Apart from surpassing GDP contribution targets, the country also exceeded its 86 million domestic tourists target for 2022 as it closed 2018 with a total of 111 million domestic tourists.

“It should be adjusted, but again, it’s a process. All sectors should be involved, because this was done even before President Duterte’s time, the targets. So we’ll talk to them (private sector) again,” Puyat said.