Asia Pacific has benefitted significantly from Japan’s air travel recovery in Q1 this year despite a decline in 2016 departures due to safety concerns in Europe, ForwardsKeys intelligence reveals.

From January to mid-March this year, total Japanese outbound travel rose by 4.1% compared to 2016, where it dipped by 5.4% partly owing to the spate of terrorist attacks in countries including Germany, Turkey and Belgium.

Asia Pacific, which holds a 60.1% share of Japanese arrivals traffic, enjoyed an increase of +4.7% this year, with Australia and Hong Kong notching growth of more than 30% compared to the same period last year.

Other Northeast Asian destinations, including China, South Korea and Taiwan, enjoyed positive growth, but US island territory Guam dipped by 27.6%.

In the year to date, Europe, with a 17.5% market share, has seen growth of +1%, after a slump of -16.4% in 2016.

ForwardKeys CEO Olivier Jager said: “These are encouraging findings which show a significant bounce back from security concerns.  Japanese outbound travel was affected from late 2015. But long-haul destinations are now recovering from a negative year in 2016. The figures for Australia are also good, with the usual caveat that people may be booking earlier than last year.”

As reported, Chinese bookings to Europe buoyed in January due to the Chinese New Year, with international air travel bookings to all destinations made in December for the period 18 January to 1 February ahead by 9.8%.

‘EXTREMELY HEALTHY’ AUSTRALIA FORWARD BOOKINGS

ForwardKeys also notes that inbound and outbound forward bookings for Australia over the next six months are ‘looking extremely healthy’ at +12% ahead of the same period last year.

Growth from Indonesia (+133%), Hong Kong (+72%) and China (+45%) reflects Australia’s wholesome inbound traffic trend, but New Zealand passenger numbers are lagging (+11%) in the forward booking stakes.

High performing Australian travel destination bookings within Asia Pacific are headlined by Malaysia (+64%), followed by India (+48%) and Indonesia (+4.6%) compared to the same period last year.