South Asia leads regional arrivals growth
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The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) today released preliminary figures for international visitor arrivals into Asia and the Pacific for January 2011, with the region seeing a 7% year-on-year expansion.
South Asia set the pace with the strongest arrivals growth from amongst the four sub-regions, with a gain of 14%. Sri Lanka (+46%), Nepal (+26%), the Maldives (+18%) and India (+10%) each set new records for the month. The ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, which started in mid-February in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, is expected to help maintain the current growth momentum for this sub-region up to and including the final on 2 April 2011.
Destinations across Southeast Asia also reported a strong gain of 10% for the month, boosted by double-digit growth in international arrivals to Cambodia (+18%), Indonesia (+11%), Myanmar (+27%), the Philippines (+17%), Singapore (+16%), Thailand (+12%) and Vietnam (+22%). However, despite a strong campaign from the national tourism board, growth in visitor arrivals to Malaysia remained sluggish. Numbers were up just 1%, a marginal rise which PATA analysts attribute to a small decline in arrivals from Southeast Asia, which contributes 70% of tourism arrivals.
Northeast Asia registered a comparatively slower growth of 5.5%, although due to the region’s huge volume base, this still equated to more than 940,000 additional arrivals for the month. The Pacific meanwhile, continued its steady growth at 4% for the month. Australia and New Zealand led the way while some island destinations witnessed a decline in visitors; Vanuatu was down 21% yoy for example.
Kris Lim, Director of PATA’s Strategic Intelligence Centre; “The year 2011 started strongly for the travel and tourism industry in Asia and the Pacific, maintaining the arrivals growth momentum seen throughout 2010. South Asia and Southeast Asia continued to deliver the stronger results while Northeast Asia and the Pacific posted comparatively slower growth. This early positive momentum however, is obviously expected to be negatively affected by the devastating earthquake and resultant tsunami that struck Japan on 18 March.”
The Asian tourism market will be hit hard by events in Japan which is the second largest source market for Asia Pacific, behind China, and generated some 17.5 million arrivals to the region’s destinations last year. As the economy shrinks as a result, outbound travel over the coming months will be depressed.
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