Philippines Tourism Dept. Launches Public Dashboard for Transparency and Industry Growth

The Department of Tourism (DoT) announced on Wednesday that it is promoting greater transparency in the tourism sector by allowing the public to access key tourism indicators through a dashboard feature. “Making this information available to the public is not just about transparency for its own sake,” Tourism Secretary Dita Angara-Mathay said in a statement. “It is about giving our stakeholders, from local government units to tourism businesses to ordinary Filipinos, the tools to understand how our industry is doing and where the opportunities are,” she added. The dashboard, accessible through DoT’s official website, provides monthly and annual visitor arrival data beginning in 2010, and outbound traveler data from 2023 to 2025. A pie chart displays the country’s current leading source market, while a table shows a detailed monthly arrivals breakdown by the top 20 countries of origin. As of Aug. 31, the dashboard logged 4,415,860 visitor arrivals, up 0.78% from 4,381,585 arrivals during the same period last year. The United States ranked as the top source market, accounting for 20.98% of the total, or 926,575 arrivals. South Korea, which previously led the country’s market, trailed at 16.86%, or 744,732 arrivals, while Japan recorded 7.28%, or 321,545 arrivals. The figures available on the platform were based on eTravel records of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and records from the Bureau of Immigration (BI). The agency noted that both agencies provide a “more complete” count of international visitor arrivals for the period. Beyond traveler counts, the platform tracks Tourism Direct Gross Value Added (TDGVA), based on the local statistics agency, to show which tourism sector contributed the largest share to the economy. A table comparing tourism employment with total national employment is also available on the dashboard, highlighting the sector’s share of jobs nationwide. “When people can see the data for themselves, they become part of the effort to grow tourism, not just observers of it,” Ms. Angara-Mathay said. As of 2025, 15.7%, or 7,704,988, of the 49,013,170 employed Filipinos work in the tourism sector. — Almira Louise S. Martinez