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BORACAY, Philippines – Boracay Island, off the northern end of Aklan, remains firmly on track to reach its target of 1.7 million tourist arrivals by the end of this year.
Data from the Malay Municipal Tourism Office showed overall tourists arrivals hit the 982,710 mark in the first 6 months this year, an increase of 15.32% from the 852,168 tourists seen last year.
International interest in Boracay remained strong during the period, with foreign arrivals up by 32.33 % to 472,814 compared to 357,303 last year.
These arrivals came mostly from inbound markets in the Asia and Pacific region.
Korea is still the biggest visitor market with 161,555 or 34.17% of the total foreign arrivals to the island.
China maintained its position at second place with 153,336, or close to 32%, and Taiwan occupied third place, bringing in 33,022 visitors.
Rounding up the top 5 were tourists from Malaysia with 15,670, and Americans with 13,782.
It's also worth noting that arrivals from China posted an exponential growth of 204% in terms of inbound markets during the period, while Korea grew at 9.88%.
East Asia tops
Tourists from East Asian or Hongkong, China, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan topped the inbound traffic with 357,553, accounting for 75.62% of foreigners.
This was followed by visitors from Southeast Asia or Singapore, Laos, Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Indonesia with 25,418.
On the other hand, domestic tourists registered 484,131 arrivals, up from the 469,227 from the same period last year, representing an increase of 3.17%.
For the month of June, total visitor arrivals reached a total of 140,380.
April saw the most number of arrivals with 183,047, followed by February with 173,256; May, 170,454; January, 158,701; and March with 156,872.– Rappler.com
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