BALANGA CITY — Bataan has generated about 1.2 million excursionists and tourist arrivals in 2017.
“Our target is that by 2020, Bataan will hit the one million mark of excursionist and tourist arrivals but just this 2017, we have reached about 1.2 million arrivals,” Provincial Tourism Operations Officer Danica Tigas disclosed during the provincial kick-off of National Statistics Month celebration.
“The source of our data came from the combined numbers of excursionists and tourist arrivals recorded from all tourism destinations, attractions, and resorts in the province,” she added.
Tigas explained that excursionists are those who stayed for less than 24 hours while tourists are those who stayed for more than 24 hours but less than a year.
Compared to the 2016 data, excursionist arrivals grew by 78 percent while tourist arrivals had an increased of 25 percent with a total of about 700,000 of both excursionist and tourist arrivals in the province.
“Yearly, we can see that there is always an increase in both our excursionist and tourist arrivals from 2014 to 2017 which means that our promotional activities and events conducted in the province are really effective,” Tigas said.
The statistics also showed that in 2017, the month of April had the highest number of recorded arrivals reaching 97,244 while September had the least number recorded with 18,621.
Currently, there are 383 establishments composed of beach and inland resorts, hotels or motels, and restaurants that accommodate visitors in the province.
“We hope that by this year and the coming years, more and more visitors will arrive and enjoy the beauty of various tourist destinations located here in Bataan,” Tigas furthered.