Tourism

At the groundbreaking for the Caticlan (Boracay) airport terminal on July 14, 2025, President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. (Bongbong Marcos, BBM) had effusive words for chair and CEO Ramon S. Ang, whose San Miguel Corporation is the operator of the airport of the country's premier tourist destination after Manila.

- TONY LOPEZ

The CEO of SMC, BBM said, "is our very, very important partner, full partner with the government in nation building."

SMC manages three of the country's largest airports — the Manila International Airport (NAIA), with four to five terminals and being modernized to service 60 million passengers a year; the P735.654-billion Bulacan Airport now under construction since 2021 to service 100 million passengers, expandable to 200 million, a year, and the Caticlan (Boracay) airport which handled four million passengers last year and will more than double that to seven million by 2027.

With its 7,600 islands, the Philippines right now needs 400 airports. It only has 90 airports, of which barely 23 are night-rated, and only eight can service international flights adequately.

Yet, domestic air tourism is bursting at the seams. More than 60 million Filipinos travel by air domestically. BBM reckons tourism contributes eight percent of GDP, the value of the economic production. With GDP at P28.5 trillion, eight percent is a whopping P2.28 trillion. The Department of Tourism has a lower estimate of tourism's GDP share, P760 billion.

BBM senses the urgency of more airports now. "We are very happy and we are all very excited that we are slowly putting together the building blocks of our policy of opening up our areas, tourist areas, our business areas to international travelers without having to go through the Manila airport," he said in Boracay. Marcos wants tourists to fly straight to domestic destinations like Boracay, instead of having to connect through Manila.