IN the Asia Edition of Bloomberg's Morning Briefing on Jan. 7, there is a section 'Deep Dive: Thailand's Tourism Rebound.' I have long written and expounded on Japan and Thailand being the gold standard in tourism with, in my view, Japan being the prestige product and Thailand being the full-service product.

To put what Thailand's tourism achieves in financial terms, the total gross domestic product (GDP) of the Philippines from Wikipedia is estimated to be $471 billion as of the end of 2024 with a bit over $3,000 GDP per capita. Various local papers, citing the Department of Tourism, reported tourism revenue for the Philippines in 2024 was up 9 percent to P760 billion, or about $13 billion, and about 5.95 million arrivals short of the 7.7 million target but is a record high. A lot of those are balikbayans and extended family. That is great, but I wonder how much pure tourism with no overseas Filipino connection we get. I am happy our kababayan bring their friends and families home, but it should not be largely limited to that.