Tourists’ clamor: Better infra, not just promos
Having traveled to 203 countries and territories around the world, Filipino globe-trotter Riza Rasco said not a single one could be considered the best tourist destination because each of these places offered its own unique attractions.
That’s why she believes the Philippines could be a prime destination for foreign tourists, if the government can address the inadequate infrastructure that makes it difficult for visitors, whether foreigners or locals, to travel across the country.
“We’ve been trying to reach out to the [Department of Tourism, or DOT]. It’s not in their scope to do this,” Rasco, cofounder of Filipino travelers’ group Philippine Global Explorers (PGE), told the Inquirer.
“They’re all about promo, promo, promotion. You’re spending lots of taxpayers’ money on these slogans—they keep changing and changing and changing the slogan. How many tourism slogans have we had? And, we’re spending millions on these slogans. You could use all this money for building infrastructure,” she said.
Starts at airport
As soon as travelers step out of the plane and walk into a Philippine airport, it’s already “so difficult” because they wouldn’t know what ride to take or how to transfer to another airport terminal, Rasco said.
“First of all, our airports are really embarrassing. The airports in Africa are much better. We really got left behind. And then the food at our airports, it’s really bad. It’s mostly fast food,” she said.
Having visited all of the 82 provinces in the Philippines, Rasco said the country would need an all-in-one online hub that tourists could use to search for essential information, such as transport services, routes and schedules.
“When I traveled across the Philippines, it was so hard to find the schedule of the ferries, the schedule of the buses,” she said, noting that sometimes schedules were changed arbitrarily.
Rasco also pointed out that many areas in the country look “dirty” because of election campaign posters that were never removed. “Those are the things that outsiders see but we don’t … because we see it everyday,” she said.
Compared to their overseas counterparts, the country’s tourism staff, including tour guides, also lack training and are unable to anticipate the needs of travelers.
“It’s expected that a lot of the staff would probably have not traveled abroad, outside the country, and so, that’s why I’m saying that they need training. They need to be trained for foreign travelers, for international tourists,” she explained.
Drop in Korean visitors
According to DOT figures, there were 5,940,975 foreign tourists that visited the Philippines last year, 0.27 percent higher than the 5,925,055 recorded in 2024.
South Korea has consistently been the country’s top source of foreign tourists since 2010, save for 2021 and 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It accounted for 20.76 percent of foreign arrivals in the Philippines last year.
But the number of Korean visitors notably dropped by 18.49 percent to 1,346,301 in 2025 from 1,651,779 in 2024.
According to Erwin Balane, tourism attaché at the DOT office in South Korea, the decrease was primarily due to safety and security concerns, fueled by an uptick in reported crimes that victimized Koreans in recent years.
He noted that the fatal shooting of a Korean tourist in April last year by a motorcycle-riding assailant in Angeles City, Pampanga, was extensively covered by Korean media and “significantly heightened perceptions of risk.”
“Such incidents have eroded traveler confidence and reinforced the belief that the Philippines is less safe than competing destinations in the region,” Balane said in an email to the Inquirer.
He explained that Korean travelers now have a “heightened level of caution” toward Southeast Asian countries in general, redirecting their interest to places like Japan and Taiwan that are perceived as “safer” destinations.
Countries, such as Vietnam and Thailand, also experienced a drop in the number of Korean tourists last year, decreasing by 4.6 percent and 16.4 percent, respectively, noted Balane, citing data from the Korea Data Lab.
“Should this sentiment persist, its negative spillover effects may continue to impact Philippine arrivals through early 2026,” he said.
Better value for money
Besides, Balane said that Korean tourists would choose Vietnam and Thailand over the Philippines because they offered “a combination of affordability, convenience and well-established tourism infrastructure.”
The two countries have “highly developed tourism industries with efficient transportation systems, a wide range of accommodations, and clearly organized tour services, making travel easy even for first-time visitors,” he said.
Vietnam and Thailand are also seen to offer better value for money given their reasonably priced food, shopping and diverse selection of destinations and tourism products.
“Since the pandemic, tour prices in the Philippines have risen significantly due to higher operational costs, increased hotel rates, and elevated service fees, all of which have been further affected by global inflation,” Balane said.
“At the same time, infrastructure development has not progressed as quickly as the rise in costs,” he said, adding that traffic congestion and poor road conditions were affecting overall visitor satisfaction, on top of higher prices.
For price comparison, Balane cites the tour packages offered by Hana Tour, Korea’s largest travel agency.
A three-night, five-day tour to Bangkok or Pattaya in Thailand costs between 349,000 and 1.8 million Korean won, while going to Danang, Vietnam, would cost from 689,000 to 1.6 million won. A tour package to Cebu costs more—around 959,000 to 2.1 million won.
To counter the decline in Korean tourists, Balane said DOT-Korea has taken the initiative to focus on sustained advertising, comarketing with Korean travel trade partners and promotion of new Philippine destinations.
Role of vloggers
For 2026, he said the agency would continue participating in travel trade, dive and consumer fairs while also conducting familiarization trips for Korean agents, media, divers or golfers.
Despite its problems, travel vloggers Mel Roxas and Enzo Mansiguiao are not giving up on traveling and promoting the Philippines, but they hope the DOT can also support Filipino content creators who have been trying to uplift the country’s tourism industry.
“There are many Filipino travel vloggers, who are more deserving than us, whom the DOT can hopefully support,” the pair, who runs a travel channel on YouTube called Go with Mel, told the Inquirer via email.
They also urged the agency to pay attention to provinces and “beautiful places” that were not yet well-known but have the potential to become a tourist destination with the proper promotion and support.
Rasco made a similar appeal, hoping that the DOT would tap PGE as well as its affiliate travelers’ group called the Philippine Travel Masters, composed of individuals who have visited all 82 provinces of the Philippines, for insights on tourism.
“For foreign travelers to come to the Philippines, they must see what the Philippines has to offer,” she said. “What is different about the Philippines? Why would I go there? They’re not going to come here because it’s like Japan or Thailand. They’re going to come here because we offer something different to them.”
One of her suggestions is to develop Mindanao as a tourism hotspot and “embrace our Muslim heritage.”
“How many Muslims are there in the whole world?” Rasco pointed out. “There’s like 2 billion Muslims in the whole world. Why wouldn’t we want to prepare our tourism for muslim visitors?”
“We should be creative enough to embrace, to use our own culture and our strengths as a country. Our identity, we shouldn’t lose it,” she said.
