110,000 students from Korea arriving

The Philippine tourism attaché in Korea expects that some 110,000 Korean students will travel to the Philippines this year, mainly to attend English secondary language lessons.
 
Tourism Attaché Maricon Basco Ebron said the number of students would account for about 17 percent of the total 650,000 visitor arrivals expected from Korea in 2007.
 
Ebron made the assessment at the sidelines of the recently concluded Korea Student Fair 2007-Fall, which attracted 30,000 Korean students, all seriously planning to study abroad.
In that event alone, Ebron said around 8,000 students were booked by 14 Philippine-based schools occupying 16 exhibit booths at the fair.
 
She based her estimate on the traditional average of 50 students per booth that exhibiting Philippine schools used to generate in these events.
 
Of the 16 booths at the fair, seven were located outside the Philippine pavilion, which had nine booths occupied by the private sector and six by the Department of Tourism for its promotional displays and marketing activities.
Ebron said the bookings at the fair normally constituted only the initial wave of student registrants. “By word of mouth or referrals from fellow students, succeeding waves of enrolees follow suit,” she said.
She said the department’s 2007 target of 110,000 student arrivals from Korea was based on the actual figures recorded by the Bureau of Immigration over the years, placing it at 14 to 17 percent of the total.
“Yet, that percentage is quite conservative since it does not include students with alien resident visas or those young people being brought in by Korean retirees and businessmen,” Ebron said.

She said the number of students among visiting Koreans was strategically important to the department since the sector made up the bulk of long-staying Korean guests, who essentially had to spend more for their upkeep while in the Philippines.