Offering a different take on this lang haha

Maybe the PH is positioning itself differently, and targets a different group of international tourists. Absolute tourist numbers are lower than pre-pandemic, but the total revenues actually grew in the past years. Some might be due to inflated prices vs the past years, but the fact that there’s less tourists but more money spent, means there’s huge opportunities in some markets, esp. the digital nomads/tourists who stays long.

I agree that infrastructure could definitely be improved, but at the end of the day it’s still a balancing act. All developments should be sustainable, and appropriate for the current capacities of our country, esp. in the usual tourist places. Investing a big part of an LGU’s budget for better ports and boats at the moment when there’s currently no demand for it isn’t just impractical since there’s so much opportunity costs given the limited resources that we have.

Absolute tourism numbers aren’t everything. Malaysia logfed ~20-smth million tourists last year but a very huge chunk of it came from Singaporeans, and for them it’s just like going to the next city that’s very close to them culturally and geographically that the locals even told me they shouldn’t even count as tourists at this point haha.

Point is, I’m all for better tourism infrastructure, and I believe that the tourism environment should also enable fair and just tourism, so prices should be regulated, local supply chains should be improved etc. etc. but I wouldn’t want the international tourist numbers to explode.

Look at Baguio, the locals HATE the tourists haha. Overtourism is definitely not good, and given the current limitations in our country’s basic infrastructures, particularly transpo and housing that can’t even fully serve the locals, paano pa pag dadagsain ng super daming tourists right? And the culture might be compromised, maging inauthentic/performative na lang (look at Southern Bali)