TACLOBAN CITY – The Department of Tourism (DOT) regional office here has expressed concern over incomplete reporting of tourist arrivals among local government units in Eastern Visayas, a major setback in reaching the target number visitors last year.
Rodel Balierbare, DOT statistics point person, said the region only recorded a 7.91 percent arrival growth in 2016 when it only welcomed 1.1 million tourists based on official tally.
The target for tourist arrivals for 2016 was 1.2 million.
Citing official statistics, Balierbare said the region’s top five most visited destinations last year are mostly in Baybay City because of their effective data collection and frequent submission of data in terms of same day visitors.
“We have a lot of tourist destinations frequently visited by touristswhich are not included in the list of most visited sites because their statistics are not submitted,” Balierbare said on Tuesday (August 22).
For this year, the DOT has no available arrival data since there are only three local government units that submitted their tourism data.
The government is expecting to welcome at least 1.4 million foreign and domestic visitors in Eastern.
The tourism department is highly dependent on the data submitted by provinces and cities to come up with the regional situation of tourism industry. The data serves as basis for budget allocation and investments from the private sector.
Last week, the DOT held a statistics training for tourism officers to refresh them on generating statistics strategies.
The training guarantees data reliability and allows countries and territories to have a common tool and reference in tourism data generation and to strengthen DOT’s campaign on generating relevant tourism statistics that serves as indicators of industry performance. (SARWELL Q.MENIANO/ALECXIS L.PANGANIBAN, OJT/PNA)
