Tourist arrivals into Asia Pacific exceed global average
BANGKOK, October 11, 2018
Foreign arrivals into Asia Pacific destinations continued to grow at better than the global average in 2017, reaching a record volume high of more than 646 million arrivals.
According to the Annual Travel Monitor 2018 Final Edition (ATM) released by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) today, international visitor arrivals (IVAs) into 47 destinations in Asia Pacific covered in the report increased by 5.7 percent and added close to 35 million additional arrivals to the collective foreign inbound count into Asia Pacific in 2017.
In percentage increase terms between 2016 and 2017, the Pacific had the strongest annual increase at 5.9% year-on-year, followed by the Americas at 5.8%, while Asia kept pace with the Asia Pacific average of 5.7%.
By annual increase in the absolute volume of foreign arrivals, however, these positions were reversed with Asia receiving close to 25 million additional foreign arrivals between 2016 and 2017, followed by the Americas with a gain of almost 8.6 million and the Pacific with around 1.4 million additional foreign arrivals received over that period, the report said.
Within the Americas, Central America showed the strongest incremental increase in foreign arrivals between 2016 and 2017, capturing 50.5% of the 8.577 million increase into the Americas over that period.
While in the Pacific, Oceania received more than half of the additional foreign arrivals into the region, followed by Polynesia.
All told more than 40% of the 47 destinations covered in the report had annual growth rates in excess of 10%; another 28% had annual growth rates in excess of five percent.
For sheer annual volume increase between 2016 and 2017, the strongest Asia Pacific performers were: Turkey (7.1 million); Japan (4.7 million); Mexico (4.2 million); Vietnam (3 million); and Thailand (2.9 million).
Of the destinations covered in this report, more than a quarter had annual volume increases of more than one million each, while close to 15% had between half a million and one million apiece.
The strong collective performance of Asia Pacific destinations in 2017 appears to be continuing into 2018 as well.
Dr Mario Hardy, the CEO of PATA, pointed out: “Early results for 2018 show a collective annual increase in foreign arrivals into Asia Pacific destinations of 8.7%, adding more than 25 million additional arrivals to the total inbound count during the first periods of 2018 relative to the same period of last year.” - TradeArabia News Service
