Electronic visas mulled for Chinese, Indian tourists
Airlines and charter operators have already approached us expressing grave concern about the present limitations.
As Chinese and Indian tourists are expected to be the main market for the country’s tourism industry, the Department of Tourism said it plans to implement ways of providing seamless travel to these nationals via an electronic visa system.
E-Visa is a system aimed at saving passengers from long and tiresome bureaucratic procedures, as well as creating an alternative to visas issued at the borders.
Through the system, users can apply for visas online to countries they wish to visit.
Tourism Secretary Christina G. Frasco recognizes tourism achievements made last year with the Philippines concluding 2022 with 2.65 million international tourist arrivals, surpassing the targeted 1.7 million figures, but she pointed out that there are still bottlenecks which prevent the country from fully unlocking the potential of seeing international tourism in the country.
“For this reason, our President issued the directive to various government agencies to explore how the bottlenecks to travel into the country may be addressed and specifically, he indicated that one of the ways by which travel into the Philippines may be fully opened up, especially to certain important markets, is through the provision of electronic visas (e-visa),” she said during her high-level convergence meeting on Friday with the heads and representatives from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Department of
Information and Communications Technology, Department of Justice, and Bureau of Immigration to discuss visa reforms primarily to ease entry for country’s source of tourist markets.
Earlier, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. released a directive that government agencies must explore the provision of e-visas to Chinese and Indian nationals, among others.
‘The President has issued a directive to various government agencies to explore how bottlenecks to travel into the country may be addressed; he indicated that one way by which travel into the Philippines may be fully opened up to certain important markets is through the provision of electronic visas (e-visa).’
Important market
Emphasizing the importance of the Indian tourist market, the DoT said 58 percent of the total Indian visitors are repeat travelers, thus there is a need to continue efforts to sustain and increase their coming into the country by exploring travel mechanisms, primarily an e-visa system, that would make travel seamless.
India, the DoT noted, has risen from being an opportunity market for the Philippines to an important source of foreign visitors.
“We are the only country that presently does not provide the convenient electronic visa for Indian nationals. This is a huge market that the Philippines has yet to explore,” explained the tourism chief.
With this, Indian Ambassador to the Philippines H.E. Shambhu S. Kumaran responded: “Perhaps Indian travelers traveling to ASEAN could potentially be looking at a new destination. So, in many ways, both in terms of the dynamic bilateral relationship, but also in terms of the larger trends in India, I think the timing is very opportune for the Philippines to be doing something to reach out to Indian travelers, and this, I’m sure, will lead to a very dramatic breakthrough in terms of how our nationals will travel.”
Second largest source of tourists
Meanwhile, China in 2019 was the country’s second-largest source of inbound tourists, with more than 1.7 million arrivals and translating to P2.33 billion in tourism receipts.
“In 2019, it may be noted that our Philippine foreign posts in China were able to process over 1.5 million visas for the Chinese market ranging from an average daily number per post of 508 up to as high as 2,704 visas per day,” she said. “However, it has been brought to our attention by various airlines that have approached us that the Philippine consular posts in China have issued visa application advisories limiting the acceptance of visa applications per day from only around 60 to 100,” Frasco said.
She said that with the low target of half a million Chinese coming into the Philippines, the country needs to issue 1,704 visas per day, while for the medium scenario, the Philippines needs to issue 3, 409 visas per day.
“If we are to target two million Chinese coming to the Philippines, which is the desired target of the Department of Tourism, then we would need to issue 6, 818 visas per day for a total of 1.8 million visas a year, which is not too far off from the 1.5 million issued in 2019,” Frasco said.
Massive opportunity for Philippine tourism
According to the Worldometer of the United Nations, China currently has a population of over 1.4 billion. The sizable population translates to a massive opportunity for Philippine tourism, particularly considering that according to 2019 data, China provided the largest number of outbound tourists all over the world with 160 million Chinese citizens traveling to various countries.
Citing global data, the tourism chief said: “Chinese outbound tourism will surpass 2019 levels by 2024 and therefore, time is of the essence for the Philippines to ensure that the ease with which Chinese citizens can come into the Philippines can be approved.”
“With the projected number of visas to be issued due to the quotas presently imposed, revenue losses are anticipated, and we stand to lose over $2.51 billion in revenues if the difficulties in obtaining visas are not immediately addressed,” Frasco said. “Airlines and charter operators have already approached us expressing grave concern about the present limitations. According to them, they may not be able to increase the flight frequencies that they are very much prepared to resume due to low passenger numbers and airfares and travel packages may become too expensive and therefore, not competitive,” she added.