South Asia tourism continues double-digit growth
Contributors are not employed, compensated or governed by TD, opinions and statements are from the contributor directly
International visitor arrivals into Asia Pacific destinations grew by 6% year-on-year in June 2011, according to the latest data from the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA). South Asia once again outpaced the regional average growth rate, with arrivals jumping 12% year-on-year in June, boosted by double-digit increases in inbound numbers to Nepal (+38%), the Maldives (+27%) and Sri Lanka (+20%). India maintained the same pace of growth seen in the previous month at 7%. European arrivals are amongst the main contributors to this growth.
Southeast Asia has Asia Pacific’s fastest growing sub-region however, seeing a 16% increase in visitors during the month of June. The rebound in arrivals to Thailand (+54%) positively impacted this overall result, strongly supported by the other reporting destinations in this sub-region all of which enjoyed double-digit growth. This in turn was supported by strong travel demand within ASEAN and an increase in arrivals from China.
Northeast Asia saw an improvement after posting slow growth of 0.6% in May, with a 3.7% increase in arrivals for June 2011. This growth, however, was very unevenly distributed among destinations in the sub-region. Tourism demand to Japan continued to recover, reducing losses in inbound arrivals from -63% in April to -50% in May and -36% in June. Taiwan (-2%) and China (+1%) registered weak results while Hong Kong (+16%), Macau (+15%) and South Korea (+11%) enjoyed buoyant growth for the month, supported by the key origin market of China. It should be remembered however, that even though the percentage growth rate may be relatively weaker than for other sub-regions, the sheer volume of arrivals to Northeast Asia means that 3.7% growth directly translates into more than 600,000 additional arrivals for the month.
Comments are closed.