By Minerva BC Newman CEBU CITY – Central Visayas will most likely lose more than P2.18 billion in tourism receipts from arriving Chinese tourists alone in February 2020 due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). (REUTERS/DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM/MANILA BULLETIN) This was disclosed by the Department of Tourism in Region 7 (DOT-7 as it noted that the spread of the coronavirus has resulted in travel bans and cancellation of travel plans. DOT-7 regional director Shalimar Hofer Tamano, in a media briefing over the weekend, said that foregone tourism revenues for February this year did not even include those cancelled travels from Korea, Japan and other countries to the various tourists’ destinations here in Central Visayas. “Remember that top tourist markets in Central Visayas in 2019 included the Koreans as our number 1 visitors at 1,579,189, followed by China and Japan tourists at 762,583 and 548,627, respectively, with Americans, 275,161; and Taiwan with 135,126 travelers,” Tamano said. Australians at 78,464; United Kingdom nationals at 64,860, and Germans at 59,786 composed the top eight countries that visited various tourism sites in the region last year, Tamano added. She noted that 2019 was a good year for tourism in the region because Central Visayas registered over P97 billion tourism revenues from the 5,116,084 domestic, and 4,308,226 foreign tourists that visited the region. They had average daily expenses of P1,200 for domestic and P6,597 for foreign visitors, and stayed for an average of three nights in various tourism sites in Central Visayas. The P97-billion tourism revenue in the region last year did not even include the receipts from AirBnb and ESL activities here. “AirBnB and ESL visitors/tourists are long-term stay from one week to about three months and Cebu is the biggest center/hub for ESL in the Philippines,” Tamano added. He said that if we include the revenues from AirBnb and ESL contributions, receipts could have reached more than P100 billion from the tourism sector. According to Tamano Cebu controls about 79 percent of the region’s tourism pie in 2019, Bohol with 17 percent, while Negros Oriental and Siquijor accounted for two percent each in tourism for the region’s economy. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak room occupancy in Cebu dove down to about 23 percent for February, while Bohol experienced negative 35 percent compared to the same period last year, Tamano bared. Tamano revealed that because of the setback in the country’s tourism sector due to COVID-19 outbreak, DOT put in place sets of recovery programs shifting its paradigm to a more localized promotion of travel and tourists’ sites. “In Central Visayas, we had been holding series of meetings with various tourism industry stakeholders to find ways and mitigating measures to promote domestic tourism and we are looking at a budget of P61 million from the six billion pesos overall DOT masterplan budget,” Tamano bared.