THE Bureau of Immigration (BI) said that it expects arrivals to hit 1.5 million this December amid the holiday season.

Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco expressed such confidence as data showed that the country started recording around 1 million arrivals in the second quarter of 2023.

Last month, the Philippines posted 1,160,699 arriving passengers, almost half of whom are foreign nationals.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the BI recorded 1.7 million arrivals in December.

”The total number of arriving passengers for the entire year (2023) is already 79% higher than in 2022,” the BI said on Monday.

Tansingco also said that Filipino outbound tourism has also bounced back.

In November, the BI saw almost 1.1 million departures, which is close to the 1.3 million tallied in November 2019.

To maintain smooth operations during the Christmas season, the BI said it had increased its workforce and deployed augmentation teams and mobile counters.