Growing By Leaps And Bounds

In 2015, Asia Pacific destinations hosted close to 577 million international visitors, representing an increase of 24 million arrivals compared the the previous year.

The results are found in the newly releases PATA Annual Tourism Monitor 2016 Edition which covers 44 destinations in the Asia Pacific region and provides a detailed look at the shifts and changes that have occurred in the region’s international travel sector during the past five years.

According to the report, Japan was the dominant destination in terms of annual increase in absolute numbers. The country saw its foreign arrivals grow by over 6.3 million.

China and Thailand each added 5 million more international arrivals to their inbound counts in 2015.
In fact, the top five destinations added 91% of the net increase in foreign arrivals into the 44 destinations covered in this report between 2014 and 2015.

Across the Asia Pacific region as a whole, six destinations added more than one million additional foreign arrivals to their respective inbound counts in 2015 relative to 2014; seven added between 500,000 and just under one million while a further seven destinations added between 100,000 and 500,000 additional foreign arrivals to their annual inbound counts.

Of the 44 destinations covered, 32 showed positive increases in foreign arrivals in 2015.

PATA CEO Dr. Mario Hardy said, “The constant positive performance of the Asia Pacific region, as covered in this Annual Tourism Monitor, continues to highlight the diversity of products and services on offer as well as the demand for those experiences by international travellers.”

Hardy observed: “That brings with it a forewarning of the need for constantly improving tourism management procedures and protocols if we are to maintain delivery of a superior product and service.”

There were substantial differences in both growth rates and growth volumes at the sub-regional and destination levels. Across the Asia Pacific region generally the dominant origin-destination pairs were led strongly by the Greater China flows.

Thailand and Japan recorded annual increases of 3.3 million and 2.6 million arrivals respectively from this increasingly influential source market.

Hong Kong and Macao also added substantially to the overseas inbound count for mainland China – adding 3.3 million and 2.2 million additional arrivals respectively from those source markets between 2014 and 2015.

As for 2016, PATA reports that the momentum of recent years continued through the early part of this year with a collective increase of 8.4 million international arrivals recorded by 35 destinations.

Hardy notes: “International arrivals patterns are moving constantly through different cycles at various points of the year and it is important to understand where these are happening and to adjust market activity and resource allocations to those that are showing the strongest gains. In other words, destinations must engage in data-driven marketing. This is where the PATA Annual Tourism Monitor, together with other PATA forecasts supported by these data, becomes so critically important in today’s volatile marketplace.”