Record 597m ‘foreigners’ +3% to 47 APAC markets in 2016

By Doug Newhouse |

PATA 2017 Tourism MonitorThe Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Annual Tourism Monitor for 2017 (Early Edition) has reported an annual increase of +3% in total foreign arrivals at a total of 47 Asia Pacific destinations in 2016 – equivalent to 597m inbound visitors in total.

 

Released today, the report says that the annual net increase in arrivals into the Asia Pacific region remained strong, with an additional 18m additional arrivals in 2016 compared with 2015, although it acknowledges the challenges within Turkey’s tourism sector.

 

In a statement times to coincide with the publication of this new report, PATA said: “Seventeen of those destinations had double-digit growth rates ranging from more than 30% for Nepal and Korea (ROK) and over 20% for each of Mongolia, Japan and Vietnam. Growth was once again uneven, with seven Asia Pacific reporting contractions in foreign arrivals in 2016 compared to 2015.

 

“The strongest destination sub-regions for annual growth between 2015 and 2016 were South America with an annual increase of over 13%, Oceania with a gain of more than 11% and South Asia with close to 10% growth.

 

“Across the three major regions with Asia Pacific, Asia was the front runner for foreign arrivals by volume, with almost 436m international arrivals (70%), followed by the Americas with close to 147m arrivals (34%) and the Pacific with 24.5m international arrivals (12%).”

 

PATA 2016 toust arrivals data 1

Click on table to enlarge.

INTRA-REGIONAL TRAFFIC FLOWS ‘STRONG’

PATA added that intra-regional travel flows remained ‘extremely strong’ for Asia and the Americas with 94% and 78% of these inbound volumes arising from within the same region. It also notes that the Pacific region was the only destination region where most of the arrivals came from outside the region.

 

It points to more than 52% of all foreign arrivals into the Pacific in 2016 originating from Asia – as opposed to the Pacific which generated 32% of the inbound arrivals to that region.

 

Meanwhile North-east Asian origin markets provided the most visitors in volume terms into the Asia Pacific region in 2016, led by China and Hong Kong SAR which generated 108.5m and 93.7m arrivals respectively.

 

These were followed by Macao SAR, which generated 24.4m arrivals, plus Korea (ROK) with 23.2m, Japan with 20.3m and Chinese Taipei with 19.8m arrivals.

 

Further afield, PATA notes that the USA, Canada and Mexico also rated within the top ten generators of foreign arrivals in 2016, producing 45.8m, 24.9m and 20.3m arrivals respectively into Asia Pacific last year.

 

Back in Asia, Singapore was the only Southeast Asian origin market within the top ten listing to generate nearly 19.9m arrivals for the year, although PATA says there were some very strong annual growth increases from a number of origin markets, including Cuba (+52%), Ukraine (+41%) and Argentina (+24%).

 

Mario Hardy, PATA CEO

Mario Hardy, PATA CEO.

Similarly for a number of origin sub-regions, each of which added significant incremental volumes to the absolute count into Asia Pacific destination sub-regions between 2015 and 2016. Northeast Asia topped that list with an additional 8m arrivals within its own sub-region, plus 4.4m into Southeast Asia.

 

By contrast, Southeast Asia generated 2.2m and 1.8m additional foreign arrivals into Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia itself respectively, while in The Americas it was North America into Central America that rated highly, adding more than 1.2m additional arrivals between 2015 and 2016.

 

PATA Tourism data 2017 2

Click on above to enlarge.

FLUCTUATING WINNERS AND LOSERS…

Commenting on the top line results, PATA CEO Dr Mario Hardy said: “The year was one of strong overall growth and even stronger increases for some sub-regions and individual destinations. Clearly the volume is there, but the destinations winning and losing fluctuate frequently and rapidly.

 

“The speed with which origin markets move and shift from one year to the next – and from one destination to the next – highlights the importance of having clear and reliable measures of tourism movements into and across the Asia Pacific region.

 

“We are in an age where solid marketing metrics are essential to guide strategic decisions and identify appropriate resource deployment alternatives while reducing, simultaneously, risk and bolstering our ability to capitalise upon swiftly emerging opportunities.”

 

The Annual Tourism Monitor 2017 Early Edition is available to PATA corporate members on a complimentary basis and at $325 for PATA members, $500 for Chapter members and $650 for non-members. For more information, email [email protected] or write to the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), Unit B1, 28th Floor, Siam Piwat Tower, 989 Rama I Road, Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330, Thailand.

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