THE increase tourist arrival rates in Davao city for the first semester for this year is seen to open more opportunities for the tourism sector here, a government official said.
Davao City Tourism Operations Office (CTTO) head Generose Tecson said that the city tourism office takes this increase of tourist arrivals as a good sign of economic improvement for the city.
"It should also spur the industry to come up with new places to visit as well as packages for tourists to enjoy and upgrade their services & facilities. As the mayor said we are very lucky because the private sector is very supportive of the city government's programs," Tecson said in a text message to VoxPop Davao.
Davao City mayor Sara Z. Duterte-Carpio, during her State of the City Address yesterday, said in 2016, from the month of July to December, the tourist arrival of the city reached to 976,360 tourists. In January to December of 2017, the city recorded a tourist arrival of 2,012,625.
Records at the CTOO showed domestic tourists for 2017, is at 1,835,798.
The two million tourist arrivals in 2017 also surpassed the city's goal of 1.9 million tourists.
Based from CTOO data, the foreign tourists are mainly coming from USA, Japan, China, Korea, and Australia.
For the first semester of 2018, tourist arrivals were already at 1,167,256.
"We're happy because this is realized income for our tourism sector," Tecson said in a text message. (GAD)