IT’S convenient, has the best beach, and “feels like home.” Those are among some of the reasons banker Anna Francesca goes to Boracay Island to relax and de-stress.
While she’s only visited the island once this year, last year she traveled there about six times. But no other beach in the country can compare in terms of its quality, she asserted. Boracay is constantly rated among the best islands in the world or in Asia by international travel publications or websites. At other beaches in the country, many of which she has also visited, “you’re stuck at their resorts unlike in Boracay, you can walk to eat, swim, drink, etc.
Foreign tourists, on the other hand, numbered 253,264, accounting for some 19 percent of the total visitors in the seven months to July this year. Overseas Filipinos or overseas Filipino workers who arrived on the island were 31,232. The Bureau of Immigration defines overseas Filipinos as Philippine passport holders permanently residing abroad. Prior to the pandemic, Boracay received 2 million visitors in 2019, more than half of who were foreigners.