MANILA, March 17 -- The Department of Tourism (DOT) must lure more tourists from China after a "very encouraging" surge of Chinese tourists in the Philippines, Quezon City 4th District Rep. Marvin Rillo urged.

Rillo said he is counting on the tourism industry to drive the creation of new jobs in services such as accommodation, transport, food and beverage, and entertainment, and in other activities in the value chain.

"We hope that the uptrend will keep going in the months ahead," Rillo said in a news release on Sunday.

"We need the number of Chinese travelers to return to their pre-pandemic levels to sustain the full recovery of our highly labor-intensive tourism enterprise," he added.

China is the third biggest supplier of foreign v...