CEBU CITY – Cebu’s tourism industry is seeing a growth in tourists from new markets, other than Koreans, Japanese, and Americans, the province’s top foreign visitor arrivals.

Data from the Department of Tourism (DoT) 7 reveal that from January to June this year, Cebu registered a growth in new tourist markets, including China (85.45 percent), Hong Kong (12.84 percent), Russia (52.86 percent), Vietnam (91.78 percent), India (38.06 percent) and Denmark (23.66 percent), among others.

Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries collectively posted a 297.60 percent growth or from 2,004 visitors in the first half of 2008 to 7,968 visitors in the same period this year.

In an interview with Manila Bulletin on Tuesday, Tourism Secretary Ace Durano said the total volume of tourists going to Cebu was up by 2.3 percent in the first semester of 2009.

"We achieved this despite a slowdown in Cebu's traditional international markets by maximizing growth in arrrivals from those least affected by the crisis like Russia and China and also by focusing on the domestic market which resulted in a six percent increase in domestic travel," said Durano.

“Cebu is fast opening up to the rest of the world. It is because the province has now more to offer in terms of tourism packages,” added Tourism Undersecretary Phineas Alburo in a separate interview.

According to Alburo, while Cebu used to be popular for its Magellan’s Cross and beach resorts, the tourism industry here has become more dynamic with new tour packages that include adventure tourism, sports tourism, shopping venues, more town festivals as seen during the provincial government-led Suroy-Suroy Sugbo, as well as more coastal resort destinations in the province’s northern and southern areas.

“These new activities encourage more foreigners, not from only the usual markets we get, but also those emerging markets that the DoT has tapped, especially China, India, Russia, and the Middle East,” said Alburo.

He said tourist arrivals from these new markets help “balance out” the decrease in figures coming from the top three travel markets.

In the same period of this year, the number of visitors to Cebu from Korea, Japan and the United States showed a decline, records from the DoT 7 showed.

The Koreans made up 27.83 percent of Cebu’s tourist market, followed by the Japanese at 21.38 percent and the Americans at 9.90 percent.

However, the size of each of those aforesaid tourist markets has decreased compared to figures in the same period in 2008.

There were only 89,346 Koreans who came to Cebu in the first semester this year compared to the 103,139 - or a 13.37 percent decline — who arrived in the same period last year.

The number of Japanese tourists declined by 6.77 percent or from 73,642 Japanese visitors in the first six months of 2008 to only 68,655 Japanese visitors in the same period this year.

For its part, the US tourist market posted a decline of 14.09 percent, recording only 31,800 visitors from January to June this year from the 37,014 visitors in the same period last year.

Other countries in Cebu’s top 10 tourist markets that have declined in arrivals for the same period include Taiwan, Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Alburo attributed the decline to the global financial crisis and anxieties caused by the influenza A (H1N1) virus.