Being the only city in the Philippines to join Euromonitor International’s 2019 Top 100 City Destinations in the WORLD is but another testament to Cebu City’s globally competitive offerings – may it be for business or leisure, Cebu City has both plus the fact that we have world class medical facilities as well (something I value highly when it comes to travelling with kids in tow as safety is my #1 priority and being the father, I always plan for contingencies as I don’t want to experience something like this on my supposed “vacation”).
Euromonitor is said to be a leading market research company that creates data on thousands of products and services around the world with offices in 15 cities across the globe including Singapore, Tokyo and their headquarters at London. This should tell you enough that they are the real deal in data gathering and analysis.
According to Euromonitor’s Top 100 Cities 2019 report, Cebu is the only Philippine city that made the list which is based in international tourist arrivals who have stayed in the city for at least 24 hours but not exceeding 12 months and have stayed in an accommodation (so airport layovers aren’t included).
This research included 400 cities in the world. At rank 77 with an estimated 2019 total international arrival of 3,539,100, Cebu joins the likes of of Hong Kong, London and Singapore who are are on top of the list.
For full access to the research, you can check here (no need to sign-up): http://go.euromonitor.com/rs/805-KOK-719/images/wpTop100Cities19.pdf?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWVRjNU9EZGlOVEptWlRJNCIsInQiOiJ4dEJvUVNzS1dEYVI2TE9Oa1RmTXBZU3VwdDFFbktFYVVQVk9XNUhiclYzS3ZaMDhnZ1I0R1NQbG5rUHF2c3NhSjJ6WEZVRmNsYVdGdmFHd2FHbHlDNkduZUdZZjBERlp3TkVHZ1pQZzdjeU8yK0ZMeitKWW4yV0dDRTNCaTZkViJ9
I took some time to check on actual statistics of international arrivals in Cebu and stumbled on statistics by the Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) website. According to their 2019 statistics (except December), there’s only about 2,000,0000 (factoring in December 2019 arrivals) international arrivals this year. You can see the data here: http://mciaa.gov.ph/statistics/
That’s a good 1.5M less than Euromonitor’s estimates.
MCIA’s 2018 data shows about 1,871,821 international arrivals compared to Euromonitor’s 2.8M – again a discrepancy of more than 1M arrivals.
Of course this isn’t at all conclusive that the said research is inaccurate especially since MCIA did not mention their data gathering method but I just want to point out that the data could possibly be wrong especially since MCIA should have a more accurate picture of our international arrivals given they do manage our only international airport.
Did I miss anything on this one? Please by all means share your thoughts on the comments below so others will know as well.
Update 3-3-2020:
Euromonitor sourced its data from DOT and not from the airports because the City Destinations includes foreign inbound city arrivals and visitors can enter the city as first point of entry, or via different point of entry but then travel onwards to the city. – Reliable Source that can’t be named due to the white label nature of work.
