South Asia leads tourism growth
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The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) has released its preliminary international visitor arrivals figures for Asia Pacific in October and November 2010, showing year-on-year growth of 9% and 8% respectively.
The association also predicted that with momentum continuing into December, full-year arrival growth of 10-11% is expected for the region in 2010 – well above the global figures of 6-7%.
South Asia experienced the strongest growth in October and November, with arrivals increasing 12% and 19% year-on-year.
India (+9% and +15%), the Maldives (+20% and +20%), Nepal (+12% and +22%) and Sri Lanka (+39% and +63%) all produced encouraging results, and South Asia is expected to emerge as Asia Pacific’s fastest-growing sub-region in 2010, with full-year growth expected to be around 13%.
Arrivals to Southeast Asia were saw growth of 12% and 8% respectively in October and November 2010.
Cambodia (+30% and +32%), Singapore (+16% and +16%) and Vietnam (+93% and +12%) achieved the largest year-on-year gains, and full-year growth of 10-12% is expected for the sub-region.
Northeast Asia registered steady growth of 8% for both October and November, which was comparatively slower than the rate of expansion seen in previous months.
While China (+5% and +5%) and Macau (+8% and +7%) registered slower growth, arrivals to Taiwan (+32% and +29%), Hong Kong (+18% and +17%), Japan (+11% and +12%) and South Korea (+18% and +15%) all saw double-digit gains. Full-year growth is forecast at 10-11%.
Finally, the Pacific region continued to lag behind the other Asia sub-regions. Visitor arrivals expanded 2% in October and 7% in November with full-year growth of 4-5% expected the sub-region in 2010.
“In what has been a really good year in terms of travel rebound, Asia and the Pacific is poised to record 10-11% growth in 2010, taking the total number of international visitor numbers to the region to over 300 million for the first time,” said PATA Chairman, Hiran Cooray.
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