The Association of Philippine Travel Agencies (PTAA) said the tourism sector will only recover by building cooperation with various travel agencies and working with concerned stakeholders.
At its fifth membership meeting, held Thursday at the Hotel Lucky Chinatown in Binondo, Manila, PTAA President Michelle Taylan presented several positive developments in the tourism industry in her report, emphasizing that the key to recovery is cooperation among tourism stakeholders.
“These partnerships and collaborations between different travel organizations are sure to reinvigorate outbound travel and eventually result in a robust international travel industry,” Taylan said.
She said the PTAA is also looking for more partnerships with other foreign governments and embassies to find common ground to work together to promote tourism in the country, while listing the association’s recent signings.
“The PTAA has initiated cooperation with various international travel organizations. She met with members of the Federation of Asean Travel Association and the Asean Tourism Association to exchange views on working together and achieving a common goal for the tourism industry,” Taylan explained.
“The agency also attended the travel fair organized by the Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agencies and signed a memorandum of understanding with them on how to promote tourism in both countries, especially for overseas travel.”
Taylan cited that nearly 250 million international travelers were registered for international tourism, compared with 77 million travelers in the same period last year, an increase of about 300 percent.
On the local travel scene, industry sources initially estimated that expected tourist arrivals for 2022 would be around 1 million tourists.
However, in August 2022 that figure has already been exceeded and a new forecast of 1.4 million travelers has been set and industry stakeholders hope to reach that level by the end of the year.
In conjunction with its fifth meeting, the Association also unveiled its 10th Emerging Outbound Destinations, where multiple speakers introduced new and untapped international destinations to encourage outbound travel and provide local travelers with attractive and interesting international destination choices.
During the event, Israeli Ambassador to the Philippines Ilan Fluss, Egyptian Ambassador to the Philippines Ahmed Shehabeldin, as well as representatives from the Embassies of Turkey and the United States were invited as guest speakers to keep updated on the status of their tourism industry and for which advertise different tourist attractions of the respective countries.
In addition, they discussed the travel opportunities in their countries and invited the public to visit and enjoy their travel destinations.
