Whose job is it?

The Department of Tourism missed its inbound visitor target of 7.7 million last year.

- BOO CHANCO

Only 5.9 million came. Bali, one island alone, attracted 6.33 million visitors last year. From January to May this year, the slide in our visitor numbers continued. Tourism numbers from South Korea, China and Taiwan plunged by 19 percent, 32 percent and 11.2 percent, respectively.

So, the tourism bureaucrats belatedly called an assessment forum. And the bureaucrats tried to place the burden of doing something to stop our declining visitor arrivals on the private sector.

While it is true that the private sector has a shared responsibility, the bureaucrats under the present dispensation didn't consult with them on strategies the way past administrations did.

As Stella Arnaldo, tourism columnist of BusinessMirror, reports it, the DOT named the obstacles the tourism industry faced: strong regional competition and travel costs (neighbors offering cheaper packages and flights); geopolitical tensions; limited air connectivity and capacity; border control concerns in select markets (visa issuance for China, reports of profiling of select markets linked to POGO-related issues) and economic slowdown in source markets for tourists.

But our regional competitor countries are also facing those headwinds. Why can they overcome those challenges and even raise their visitor numbers beyond pre-pandemic levels while we languish in the kangkungan?

Yet, our pitiful visitor numbers are already inflated by including overseas Pinoys. Arnaldo reports that "sluggish arrivals of foreign tourists were cushioned primarily by the 28.5 percent increase in the arrivals of overseas Filipinos to 217,626, year-on-year (YoY)."