Southeast Asia leads tourism boom

Preliminary results released by the Pacific Asia Travel Association, Wednesday, showed that international visitor arrivals to Asia/Pacific destinations grew by 6% year-on-year in June 2011.

The positive result was led by Southeast Asia, which recorded an estimated 15.5% growth 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.

International arrivals growth to South Asia grew 12% in June, boosted by double-digit increases in Nepal (+38%), Maldives (+27%) and Sri Lanka (+20%). India maintained the same pace of growth seen in the previous month at 7%.

Northeast Asia saw an improvement after posting slow growth of 0.6% in May, with a 3.7% increase in arrivals for June. This growth, however, was very unevenly distributed among destinations. Tourism demand to Japan continued to recover, reducing losses in inbound arrivals from -63% in April to -50% in May and -36% in June. Chinese Taipei (-2%) and China (+1%) registered weak results while Hong Kong SAR (+16%), Macau SAR (+15%) and Korea (ROK) (+11%) enjoyed buoyant growth for the month, supported by the key origin market of China.

Of the 31 destinations reporting half-year arrivals (January to June 2011), 26 indicted positive growth, with 14 showing double-digit gains. Clear growth leaders over this period were Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand with gains of 37%, 29% and 28% respectively (January to June, year-on-year).

Collectively, these 31 destinations generated growth of 5.3% for the Asia/Pacific region during the first half of 2011. Even with the loss of almost 1.4 million arrivals to Japan, this cluster of destinations collectively not only countered that contraction but managed to add enough additional arrivals to the collective count to post a year-on-year gain of more than eight million international arrivals.

Source - ttrweekly