With a weak western European economy, fear of political unrest in North Africa and a cruise business hit by the Costa Concordia disaster, travel groups are looking to eastern Europe,China and corporate travel to brighten up 2012.
The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) expects global arrivals of international travellers to increase by 3-4 percent this year, after a 4.4 percent increase to 980 million in 2011, with growth driven by emerging markets.
"The whole world is skewed to the East. This is the New World," Taleb Rifai, secretary general of the UNWTO told Reuters in an interview at the ITB Berlin travel fair.
Officials from the tourism ministries of Tunisia and Egypt, which are struggling to encourage tourists back after uprisings, said Russian tourists were now the leading visitors to their countries, and that they were keen to attract Asian travellers.
China is expected to account for 100 million arrivals by 2020 as the country's booming economy translates into corporate investments outside China and into rising wealth for the broader population, according to the UNWTO.
German travel group TUI AG, the owner of Europe's largest tour operator TUI Travel, will bring its first groups of Chinese tourists to Europe in the summer on a package tour of Europe's cities.
"We're calling it the tour of the Museum of Europe," CEO Michael Frenzel said, highlighting that TUI is the only European tour operator to have a licence to organise international travel for China.
Frenzel said spending on foreign holidays by travellers from Asia-Pacific was expected to reach 349 billion euros ($463 billion) by 2020 as it grows at an average rate of 10 percent a year, compared with growth of 4 percent for Europe.
Spending by Chinese tourists is the fastest growing in the world, having jumped 38 percent last year, followed by Brazil, India and Russia, according to UNWTO data.
"If you're a hotel owner in Berlin, you want the Chinese to visit," said Hubert Joly, chief executive of hotels and business travel group Carlson.
BUSINESS IN PERSON
Business bookings are also expected to buoy demand this year as companies maintain their spending on trips in order to seek out new growth markets.
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