Philippine tourism is ready to embrace the new normal in traveling as it gradually opens to fully vaccinated tourists from most countries starting February 2022.
Tourism is one of the badly hit sectors by the global pandemic and continues to struggle after two years due to domestic and international travel restrictions. The previous plan to re-open our country to tourists last December 1 was also suspended due to a surge of the highly contagious Omicron variant.
Worse, many areas in the Visayas and Mindanao region were hardly affected by Super Typhoon Odette last December 16, 2021 that damaged many tourism-related establishments.
“The tourism industry can now recover and it can contribute big to jobs, livelihoods and the country’s economic growth,”
– Presidential spokesman Karlo Nograles said in a press briefing
The Philippine government announced on Friday that it is finally resuming acceptance of visa-free travel for short visits from 157 countries that already enjoyed visa-free entrance to the Philippines even before the pandemic.
The list of allowed countries includes the Top 10 Visiting Countries such as the United States, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Canada, and Britain. The only requirements are: (1) a fully vaccinated certificate and (2) a negative RT-PCR test result. Quarantine upon arrival is not required.
Excluded from the list are travelers from China, Taiwan, and India.
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