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To reach its target of 5 million foreign tourists by 2010, the Philippine Tourism Department will launch promotion campaigns in Germany, Australia and Russia next year, a senior official said on Monday.
"This would complement the seasonality of our top three markets now, that is, Japan, Korea and China. Starting next year, we want to increase the level of engagements in Germany, Australia and Russia," Tourism Secretary Joseph Durano told reporters.
Durano said 89 percent of his department's 1.3 billion pesos (US$26 million) budget would go to promotion.
Durano said that in 2004, the tourism target was surpassed by 20 percent and in 2005, by 14.5 percent (2.63 million tourists). He said the 2007 target was 3.5 million tourists.
"We are approaching our 2.8 million to 3 million tourist threshold this year," Durano said, adding that as of July 2006, about 1.6 million foreign tourists have visited the country.
Durano said the tourism industry was very healthy, citing a National Statistics Office survey showing that aside from foreign tourists, 7 million Filipinos in the country travel for leisure.
(Xinhua News Agency October 9, 2006)
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