Philippines: Korean's Favored Travel Destination

The Philippines is emerging as Korean's most popular and favored travel destination, based on a recent survey among Korean tourists, and latest reports from the Philippine Department of Tourism.

Korea Travel Times conducted a survey to determine travel behavior and level of satisfaction among Korean tourists on a country-by-country basis.

Korean tourists express a high degree of satisfaction with their Philippine travel experience, as evidenced by the 94 percent overall satisfaction rating the Philippines received in the survey.

The survey results explain the continued influx of Korean tourists to the Philippines, according to Tourism Secretary Ace H. Durano.

Last year, Korea accounted for about 18 percent of the total inbound traffic to the Philippines, making Koreans the second largest visitors to the country.

"Still, more Korean tourists are flocking to the Philippines, even posting an increase of 29.8 percent last January and 32.9 percent last February," Durano said.

Natural unpolluted environment, reasonable travel expenses and marine sports top the list of features that Koreans find enticing in the Philippines, according to the survey.

Korean tourists' most favored Philippine travel destination are Boracay (32 percent), Cebu (29 percent) and Manila (26 percent).

The survey also showed that most visitors to the Philippines are on family tours (29 percent) or honeymoon (16 percent).

"This indicates that the Philippines now looms as a honeymoon destination for Korean newly-weds, who used to pick Phuket, Thailand and Bali, Indonesia for that purpose," Durano pointed out.

Weekend Travel, backpacking, business travel are also among the key reasons for traveling to the Philippines.

Among the 3,431 respondents who have not yet traveled to the Philippines, 92 percent expressed willingness to visit the country, with 47 percent saying "very much" and 45 percent "fairly much."

The number of Korean tourists jumped 29 percent from 2005 (488,402) to 2006 (631,793). The Philippine Department of Tourism expects to welcome at least one million tourists from Korea by 2010.

5/3/06

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