Asia and the Pacific continued as a hot spot for international tourism in 2012, attracting what’s expected to be in far more than 350 million international visitor arrivals, expanding its collective inbound count by greater than 5% and generating greater than 18 million additional foreign visits, year-on-year. It’s in keeping with preliminary results released today by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA).
This is the third consecutive year during which foreign arrivals growth has remained positive for the region.
Of the 40 separate destinations covered, only 5 reported contractions for the year. Most of these were relatively marginal for the region as a complete. The sole exception was China, which, with a contraction in growth of two.2%, is estimated to have lost around 3 million international arrivals (foreign and compatriot) from its 2011 total international inbound count.
The picture is rather different for foreign arrivals to China, however (i.e., excluding compatriot arrivals). The year 2012 saw a rise of one.6% in that inbound volume, year-on-year.
Southeast Asia was the strongest performer in 2012 in annual percentage growth terms, with a gain of 9.9% for the year. This equated to a rise of greater than 8 million additional arrivals over the former year and pushed the ASEAN aggregate international inbound count to just about 89 million.
Within this sub-region, Myanmar had a staggering increase of virtually 52% in arrivals, while Cambodia and Lao PDR reported gains of 24% and 22% respectively. All 3 destinations created new records with Myanmar breaking the million arrivals mark (in total) for the primary time. Cambodia and Lao PDR both also broke the three million mark. They weren’t alone either as every destination inside the ASEAN region set new highs relating to international arrivals.
After several years of sturdy double-digit growth rates, South Asia is now settling back somewhat, but still returning strong gains; 2012 for instance saw growth of 6.6% and a rise of well over half-a-million additional international arrivals. Sri Lanka, with growth of virtually 18% saw its foreign arrivals count pass the only million mark, while the Maldives fell just in need of it. India remains the titan within South Asia, however, with greater than 6.6 million arrivals and a year-on-year gain of near to 340,000 additional foreign arrivals, some 59% of the whole additional increase within the arrivals volume to the sub-region.
Even with the contraction in total international arrivals into China, Northeast Asia still maintained a growth rate of virtually 4% for the year. It dominated the visitor increase count by receiving near 8.5 million additional international arrivals year-on-year.
Japan turned within the strongest percentage growth with a gain of 35% for the year, a performance that saw the destination recoup the losses in visitor arrivals following the tsunami of 2011 and move again into record arrivals territory. Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong SAR, and Korea (ROK) also added to the sub-regional performance with growth increases of 20%, 16%, and 14% respectively.
After a somewhat mediocre performance in 2011 (+0.3% growth), the Pacific bounced back strongly in 2012 to post a collective gain across eighteen destinations of 6%. This in turn equated to a rise of higher than 1.1 million additional international arrivals to the sub-region, which now collectively boasts a global inbound volume tantalizingly on the brink of 20 million.
The Northern Marianas (+17.4%), Vanuatu (15.1%), and Guam (+12.8%) reported the strongest percentage gains, while Hawaii, Australia, and Guam posted the best gains in more arrivals for the year.
Across the Asia/Pacific region, preliminary figures suggest that the pinnacle 5 destinations, by growth in international visitor arrivals, were: Myanmar, Japan, Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Chinese Taipei; each had a year-on-year increase of 20% or better.
In volume terms, there have been 6 particularly significant outcomes with Hong Kong SAR, Thailand, Japan, Singapore, Korea (ROK), and Chinese Taipei each securing in way over a million additional arrivals in 2012; the SAR of Hong Kong saw 6.7 million additional international arrivals.
Martin J. Craigs, CEO of PATA, said: “Asia and the Pacific continues so as to add substantially to the worldwide international arrivals count. We predict that to continue for a while yet. The players shift and alter, after all, and we are able to expect some movement relating to generating and receiving markets. But around the region we predict substantial gains in both the quantity and the worth of those movements for it slow yet.”
The PATA CEO added: “How we measure and determine the impacts of this growth in traffic is becoming more important, however. For this reason PATA is operating to advertise the idea of the entire Visitor Economy throughout its membership and around the wider industry.”
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