The Bureau of Immigration (BI) expects 1.5 million passengers to arrive in the country this December.

“This December, the last month of 2023, we are expecting around 1.5 million passengers to arrive. This is near the pre-pandemic number of passengers,” BI Deputy Spokesperson Melvin Mabulac told the “Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon” briefing.

“Just last month, more than one million or 1,160,000 passengers arrived and half of them are foreign nationals,” he added.

According to Mabulac, there was a 70-percent increase in passengers since 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He attributes the increase in passenger arrivals to “revenge travel”.

“We see that this is revenge travel after several years of travel restrictions. We also know that during Christmas, many people come here to celebrate considering that we have a unique way of celebrating it. We also have countrymen working overseas who want to go home this December and this Christmas,” Mabulac said.

As part of preparing for the holiday season, BI employees in airports are not allowed to file leaves from November 15 to January 15.

Mabulac said they will also be deploying more BI personnel, including the 38 Immigration officers who recently graduated from the Philippine Immigration Academy. Jaspearl Tan/DMS