Tourism contributed ₱2.35 trillion to the Philippine economy in 2024, 8.9 per cent of GDP, and employed 6.75 million people, 13.8 per cent of national employment, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority’s Philippine Tourism Satellite Accounts released in 2025 — and none of those figures is in the dataset most tourism students cite first. The World Bank’s international arrivals series for the Philippines stops at 2020, so a student who copies the World Bank number into Chapter 1 is citing a pandemic-year figure as if it were current.
This roundup maps the datasets a BS Tourism Management or BS Hospitality Management thesis in the Philippines can actually use, what each one measures, the year it currently runs to, and the trap in each. The figures were read from the publishers’ own pages; re-check the release date before your final defense, because the Department of Tourism and the PSA both update on a fixed calendar.
The national tourism figures a Chapter 1 can cite today
| Indicator | Figure | Source and year | The trap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tourism direct gross value added | ₱2.35 trillion, 8.9 per cent of GDP | PSA, Philippine Tourism Satellite Accounts 2024 (released 2025) | Direct value added, not total contribution; do not add indirect estimates from other sources |
| Employment in tourism industries | 6.75 million, 13.8 per cent of total employment | PSA, PTSA 2024 | Counts employment in tourism characteristic industries, not only jobs serving tourists |
| International visitor arrivals, 2025 | 6,484,060: 5,940,975 foreign visitors and 543,085 overseas Filipinos | Department of Tourism, 2025 arrivals | The DOT total includes overseas Filipinos; state which count you use |
| Growth in arrivals, 2025 over 2024 | 0.76 per cent | Department of Tourism | A near-flat year; do not describe it as a recovery surge |
| World Bank international tourism arrivals series | 8,261,000 in 2019; 1,483,000 in 2020; no later value | World Bank, indicator ST.INT.ARVL, last updated 13 July 2026 | The series ends at 2020; the “latest” value is a pandemic year |
Source 1: the Philippine Tourism Satellite Accounts
The PTSA is the PSA’s annual measurement of tourism’s share of the economy, compiled to the international tourism satellite account framework. It gives tourism direct gross value added, its share of GDP, inbound and domestic tourism expenditure, and employment in tourism industries, each for a calendar year and each revised in the following release. It is the correct source for the economic-significance paragraph in the background of the study, and the wrong source for anything about a specific destination, because it is national.
How to cite it: the PSA press release for the year, with its release date, and the table number if you quote a table. The release for 2024 came out in 2025; by the time you defend, a 2025 release may exist and the 2024 figures may have been revised. Quote the year the figure describes, not the year you read it.
Source 2: Department of Tourism arrivals and visitor statistics
The DOT publishes monthly and annual international visitor arrivals by country of residence, and the annual total splits into foreign visitors and overseas Filipinos. For 2025 the DOT reported 5,940,975 foreign visitors and 543,085 overseas Filipinos, 6,484,060 in all, 0.76 per cent above 2024. A thesis on a destination’s foreign market should use the country-of-residence breakdown and name the top markets for the year; a thesis on domestic tourism should not use arrivals at all, because arrivals count international entries.
The trap is the definition. Say whether your figure is foreign visitors, overseas Filipinos or the combined total, because the three appear in news coverage interchangeably and a panel that knows the difference will ask.
Source 3: PSA OpenSTAT and the regional accounts
OpenSTAT is the PSA’s open database of published tables. For a tourism thesis it holds the regional accounts, the labour force survey tables from which accommodation and food service employment can be read, and the PTSA tables themselves. It does not hold destination-level tourist counts; those come from the DOT’s regional offices and from provincial and city tourism offices, whose reports are usually obtained by request letter rather than download, which the guide to sampling for an HM thesis when the population is unknown treats as a Chapter 3 problem in its own right.
For a hospitality study on a single city, the honest Chapter 1 pattern is national PTSA figures for significance, a regional figure from the regional accounts for context, and a local count obtained from the city tourism office and cited as unpublished data with its date.
Source 4: the World Bank, and why the series is a landmine
The World Bank’s World Development Indicators carry an international tourism arrivals series, indicator code ST.INT.ARVL, drawn from the UN Tourism yearbook. The Philippine series records 8,261,000 arrivals in 2019 and 1,483,000 in 2020, and no value after that as of the indicator’s 13 July 2026 update. A student who takes “the latest World Bank figure” therefore cites 2020, the deepest pandemic year, as the current state of Philippine tourism — and the World Bank page does not flag the gap. Use the World Bank series for the pre-2020 trend if you need it, cite the indicator code and the update date, and take the current figure from the DOT. The same discipline — indicator, year and the date the source was last updated — was the lesson of a similar discontinuity in the guide to internet access statistics for Filipino students, where a national series dropped ten points in a year for reasons of measurement rather than reality.
Source 5: the literature databases that index Philippine tourism studies
A tourism thesis also needs related studies, and the database choice decides whether you find Philippine work at all. The comparison of what each database actually holds for Philippine theses is in the roundup of where to find related literature for a Philippine thesis; for tourism specifically, search the Philippine E-Journals for locally published destination studies, and use Google Scholar with the destination name in quotation marks, because most Philippine tourism research is destination-scoped and titled by place.
What the datasets do not give you
An evidence-first Chapter 1 also says what cannot be cited, and tourism has three gaps students routinely paper over.
Destination-level visitor counts as open data. Provincial and city tourism offices count arrivals for their own reporting, but the counts are not published as a downloadable dataset. Obtain them by request, cite them as unpublished data with the office and date, and treat any discrepancy with DOT regional figures as a finding, not an error.
Hotel occupancy rates by city. National occupancy figures appear in DOT reports for some years; a city-level rate is an industry estimate or your own survey. Do not cite a national rate as if it applied to your destination.
Tourist satisfaction and destination image. There is no national dataset. These are your primary data, collected with a validated instrument and a sample computed for an unknown population, and the sample logic is where a panel spends its questions.
Thesis topics the datasets can support
Each topic below names the dataset that supplies the Chapter 1 figure and the primary data the student must collect. Whether a given combination has already been done in your locale can be counted with the method in has your thesis topic already been studied.
1. Destination image and revisit intention of foreign visitors to a beach destination. DOT country-of-residence arrivals for significance; a visitor survey for the primary data.
2. Employment quality in accommodation establishments of a city. PTSA employment share for significance; an employee survey for the primary data.
3. Domestic tourist spending patterns in a provincial festival. PTSA domestic expenditure for context; an intercept survey at the festival.
4. Recovery of a destination’s foreign markets, 2019 to 2025. World Bank series to 2019, DOT figures after; regional office counts for the destination.
5. Service quality of family-run resorts as perceived by guests. A validated service quality instrument; local resort counts from the municipal tourism office.
6. Readiness of tourism micro-enterprises for online booking. DTI’s count of micro enterprises for significance; an owner survey.
7. Guest perceptions of sustainable practices in island resorts. DOT arrivals for the province as context; a guest survey built on a validated sustainability-perception instrument.
8. Skills gaps reported by hotel human resource managers in a regional centre. PTSA employment for significance; key-informant interviews with HR managers, which is a qualitative design with its own sampling logic.
How to write the figure into a Chapter 1 sentence
A national figure earns its place in the background of the study only when the sentence around it says what it measures, for which year, and why it matters to the destination or establishment being studied. Three sentences built from the table above, in the register a panel expects:
Tourism accounted for 8.9 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2024, or ₱2.35 trillion in direct gross value added, and employed 6.75 million Filipinos (Philippine Statistics Authority, 2025), which places the accommodation establishments of the study locale inside the sector that the national accounts identify as one of the largest employers in the economy.
International visitor arrivals reached 6,484,060 in 2025, of whom 5,940,975 were foreign visitors, an increase of only 0.76 per cent over 2024 (Department of Tourism, 2026), a near-flat year that makes the retention of existing markets, rather than the recruitment of new ones, the strategic question for a beach destination.
The most recent value in the World Bank’s international arrivals series for the Philippines is 1,483,000 for 2020 (World Bank, 2026), a pandemic-year figure that is retained here only to mark the depth of the decline from 8,261,000 in 2019; the current level is taken from the Department of Tourism.
Notice that each sentence carries the year the figure describes, the publisher, and one clause that connects the national number to the local study. A figure without that third clause is decoration, and a panel will say so.
How to cite the sources in APA 7th
Three patterns cover the datasets above. Note the organisation as author, the year the release came out, and the retrieval date for a database that changes.
Philippine Statistics Authority. (2025). Philippine tourism satellite accounts 2024 [Press release].
Department of Tourism. (2026). International visitor arrivals, 2025 [Data set].
World Bank. (2026). International tourism, number of arrivals — Philippines (ST.INT.ARVL) [Data set]. World Development Indicators. Retrieved 30 August 2026.
Add the URL your research manual requires. For an unpublished local count, cite the office as author, the year, the report title in sentence case and the words unpublished raw data in square brackets.
Write the background of the study around the right figure
Tesify drafts the significance and background sections from the tourism figure you choose — PTSA share of GDP, DOT arrivals, a regional account — with the source and year in the sentence, and builds the APA 7th entry for a government dataset as you go. Over 9,000 students have used it to write more than 15,000 chapters, and every word is still written by you.
Frequently asked questions
Where can tourism students get data for a thesis in the Philippines?
The PSA’s Philippine Tourism Satellite Accounts for economic figures, the Department of Tourism for international arrivals by country of residence, PSA OpenSTAT for regional and labour tables, and provincial or city tourism offices, by request, for destination-level counts.
How much does tourism contribute to Philippine GDP?
Tourism direct gross value added was ₱2.35 trillion in 2024, 8.9 per cent of GDP, according to the PSA’s Philippine Tourism Satellite Accounts released in 2025. Employment in tourism industries was 6.75 million, 13.8 per cent of total employment.
How many tourists visited the Philippines in 2025?
The Department of Tourism reported 6,484,060 international visitor arrivals in 2025: 5,940,975 foreign visitors and 543,085 overseas Filipinos, 0.76 per cent above 2024.
Can I use the World Bank tourism arrivals figure for the Philippines?
Only for the trend up to 2019. The World Bank series ST.INT.ARVL for the Philippines ends at 2020 with 1,483,000 arrivals, a pandemic year, and carries no later value as of its July 2026 update. Take the current figure from the Department of Tourism.
Is there a dataset of tourist arrivals by city or province?
Not as open data. Regional DOT offices and local tourism offices hold the counts and release them on request. Cite them as unpublished data with the office name and the date you received them.
What is the difference between foreign visitors and overseas Filipinos in the DOT count?
Foreign visitors are non-resident foreign nationals; overseas Filipinos are Filipino nationals residing abroad who visit. The DOT reports both and a combined total, and a thesis must state which figure it is citing.