Working on President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.’s directive for implementation of electronic visa systems, the Philippines Department of Tourism (DOT), led by Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco, initiated a high-level convergence meeting with the heads and representatives of agencies such as Department of Foreign Affairs, Department of Information and Communications Technology, Department of Justice and Bureau of Immigration to discuss visa reforms to ease entry to the country’s tourist source markets.
Philippines ended 2022 with 2.65 million international tourist arrivals against the target of 1.7 million. Frasco opined that there are still bottlenecks preventing the country from fully unlocking the global tourism potential
“For this reason, our President has issued the directive to various government agencies to explore how the bottlenecks to travel into the Philippines may be addressed. He indicated one of the ways by which travel into the Philippines may be fully opened, especially to important markets. We must also explore the provision of electronic visas (e-Visa),” she said, citing the President’s directive that government agencies must explore the provision of e-visas to Chinese and Indian nationals.
Emphasizing the importance of the Indian tourist market, the DOT stated 58% of the total Indian visitors are repeat travellers. Thus, the need to continue the efforts to sustain and increase their entry by exploring travel mechanisms, an e-visa system, would make travel seamless.
India, the DOT stated, has risen from being an opportunity market for the Philippines to an important market for foreign visitors. “Presently, we are the only country that does not provide the e-visa for Indian nationals. This is a huge market that the Philippines is yet to explore,” Frasco explained.
Indian Ambassador to the Philippines H.E. Shambhu S. Kumaran replied, “Perhaps Indian travellers visiting ASEAN could be looking at a new destination. So, in many ways, not only in terms of the dynamic bilateral relationship, but also in terms of the larger trends in India, I think the timing is opportune for the Philippines to be doing something to reach out to Indian travellers. This, I am sure, will lead to a breakthrough in terms of how our nationals will travel,” the ambassador added.
“We stand to lose over US$ 2.51 billion in revenue if the difficulty in obtaining visas is not addressed soon. The airlines and charter operators have approached us expressing concern about the present limitation. They said they may not be able to increase the flight frequencies as they are prepared to resume due to low passenger numbers. Also, airfares and travel packages may become expensive and therefore, not competitive,” Frasco added.
“The results of our discussions today will determine whether we will be able to recover considering the potential of our destinations and transform the Philippines into the tourism powerhouse. We are hopeful the results of our discussions today would result in implementation of the e-visa system and the easing of other factors as discussed,” the Secretary concluded.
