The Philippines remains as one of the top destinations for Japanese tourists because of the warm hospitality of Filipinos and innate joyfulness, according to the chief executive of the Japan Association of Travel Agents or JATA on Friday.
During the high-level meeting held as part of the President’s official visit to Japan, Takahashi Hiroyuki, chairperson of JATA said that with the potential resumption of tourism international exchange, the Philippines holds great potential to attract a large number of Japanese visitors with its many tourism offerings.
“The Philippines is very appealing to Japanese people with its hospitality and cheerfulness. Furthermore, the Philippines has a mild climate all year, making it a popular destination for younger people to relax at beach resorts like Cebu and Boracay Island,” said Takahashi during a meeting attended by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Tourism Secretary Maria Christina Frasco.
“And for retirees for an extended period of time, as many Japanese companies have also established operations in the region, so we anticipate further growth as a business travel destination,” he added.
Meanwhile, Masao Okuyama of Marine Creative, organizer of the Marine Diving Fair — one of Asia’s largest diving events — extolled the Department of Tourism for its support through booth participation in diving fairs.
“The Japanese love the Philippine Ocean. There are so many reasons for it. As border restriction relaxes, many divers are excited to visit the Philippines again. We would like to send out more information so that more divers will visit the Philippines,” Masao said.
For his part, Kento Hasebe from the Japan Philippine Tourism Council stressed that despite the hiatus brought about by the pandemic, the organization is eager to jumpstart its activities starting this year.
“We hope that we can share the many attractions of the Philippines with a lot of people,” Kento said.
Returning the stakeholders’ optimism, Frasco said that efforts under the Marcos administration ensures that “we would make it as seamless as possible for us to entice more students to study in the Philippines and that will entail our coordination with the Bureau of Immigration to be able to relax and liberalize policies in this regard.”
Marcos, on the other hand, assured Japanese tourism stakeholders of the Philippine government’s continued support for the sector.
“With the DoT, the Philippine government is assuring that we will exhaust all our efforts to revive this extremely important industry,” said the President.
“We urge our airline partners present here today to restore your pre-pandemic routes and explore new routes linking our Philippine destinations with key source cities in Japan,” he added.
Frasco, meantime, said she shared her department’s plans and programs under the Marcos administration with regard to how they intend to further develop the Japanese market considering that prior to the pandemic at least more than 682,000 Japanese came into the Philippines.
“We are aware that they have an interest in certain tourism product offerings including dive, as well as health and wellness and English as a second language,” according to Frasco.
Among the stakeholders present during the discussion is the ASEAN-Japan Centre, Association for English Studies in the Philippines, Japan Association of Overseas Studies, JATA, Japan National Tourism Organization, Japan Philippine Tourism Council and Marine Creative and MICE Japan Magazine.
Airlines including Air Asia, ANA Air, Cebu Pacific, Japan Airlines, Jetstar-Japan and Philippine Airlines also took part in the high-level meet.