DESTINATIONS in the Visayas region are among the most popular and frequently visited by both international travelers and domestic tourists. Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco on Tuesday celebrated the region’s significant contribution to the industry in her keynote remarks before the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) Visayas Island Cluster Conference. “Central Visayas, Western Visayas, and Eastern Visayas together accounted for 44 percent of the country’s total tourist arrivals, welcoming over 2.
45 million visitors in 2023,” she said. Also, over 9.67 million domestic tourists visited the region accounting for more than 20 percent of overnight travelers that same year, she said.
“This underscores the critical role the Visayas region plays in our national tourism development,” she added, as she likewise highlighted the awards recently accorded to several of its destinations. Readers of a popular luxury and lifestyle travel magazine, for instance, recently named Boracay, Cebu and the Visayan Islands, among Asia’s Top 10 Islands this year. (See, “PHL sites on Condé Nast Traveler readers’ top island picks,” in the BusinessMirror, Oct.
11, 2024.) She cited the role of the local government units (LGU) in the Visayas in submitting among the most innovative tourism infrastructure proposals to the Department of Tourism’s recent Tourism Champions Challenge (TCC), which was launched at the LMP’s national general assembly last year. Recogni.