This may be the best time to see the rest of the country as more tourist destinations are easing entry requirements.
Camiguin is scrapping the swab est requirement for fully vaccinated visitors starting today (November 15) while Boracay and Guimaras is set to follow suit the next day.
In a statement, the Department of Tourism said Camiguin will start accepting vaccination cards in lieu of a negative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test result.
As of Saturday, DOT said the following destinations have waived the swab test requirement for fully inoculated guests:
- Tarlac
- Pampanga
- Nueva Ecija
- Batangas
- Oriental Mindoro
- Masbate
- Camarines Norte
- Iloilo
- Negros Occidental
- Bohol
- Southern Leyte
- Zamboanga del Sur
- Zamboanga Sibugay
- Misamis Oriental
- Bulacan
- Cebu Province
- San Vicente, Palawan
- Naga City, Camarines Sur
- Baguio City, Benguet
- Cebu City and Mandaue City
- Clark Freeport Zone
- Subic Bay Freeport Zone
- Dingalan, Aurora
- Maasin City, Leyte
- Ormoc City, Leyte
- Calbayog City, Samar
- Mati, Davao Oriental
"With the lifting of the testing requirements for fully vaccinated visitors to these destinations, travel has become more affordable and accessible for domestic tourists, especially with the coming holiday season,” Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat said.
As for international tourism, the agency is in talks with South Korea in setting up a travel bubble to revive the pandemic-hit tourism industry of the two nations.
If the talks prosper, it would be the first travel bubble for the Philippines since the start of the pandemic.
Citing South Korea as the country’s “number one market”, followed by China and the United States, Puyat is hopeful that the quarantine requirements will be ironed out soon.
Lagging behind our neighbors, the Philippines remains at the bottom of Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking even as infections have declined.
Thailand and Indonesia have reopened to foreign visitors while Malaysia and Singapore are set to allow quarantine-free entry for the fully vaccinated before the year ends.
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