In the latest figures available, the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) today reported that the preliminary figures for international visitor arrivals into Asia/Pacific destinations1 for July 2011 show a year-on-year increase of 7%.
PATA’s Strategic Intelligence Centre notes that the growth rate has become more stable following the global economic recovery phase, which started in early 2010 and peaked in June of that year. Nevertheless, since then, Asia has continued to show healthy expansion. For the first seven months of 2011, international visitor arrivals into Asia/Pacific have grown 5%. Within Asia, South Asia is leading the pack growing by 14%, with Southeast Asia up 12%, Northeast Asia up 4% and the Pacific region up 1%.
South Asia set the pace with the strongest arrivals growth in July, recording 14% growth and adding almost 90,000 more international visitors to the sub-region’s total compared to July 2010. India (+10%) grew at a faster rate than in previous months due in part to the lower growth base of July 2010. The Maldives (+27%), Nepal (+20%) and Sri Lanka (+32%) all enjoyed buoyant growth in foreign arrivals.
The positive momentum continued for Southeast Asia in July with the sub-region returning an 11% increase in international visitor arrivals. The growth rate of foreign arrivals into Thailand (+19%) returned to a more normal level after three consecutive months of post-crisis peaks which were largely inflated on the back of comparison periods involving the political turmoil April to June 2010. Strong travel demand within the sub-region generally contributed to double-digit growth for all reporting destinations.
Northeast Asia saw a rebound during July to realise a gain of 6% for the month after posting slow growth since February this year. China (+2%) grew much more slowly than its SARs of Hong Kong (+22%) and Macau (+18%) during this period. However, because of its very large arrivals base, the Mainland still managed to welcome more than 260,000 additional visitors during the month compared to July 2010. Japanese outbound increased by 5% in July, the first positive month of growth since the tsunami in March. This promising expansion supported growth for all reporting Northeast destinations, particularly Chinese Taipei (+9%) and Korea (ROK) (+17%). Inbound visitors to Japan however, were down by 36% in July.
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