International Visitor Arrivals into Asia Pacific Exceeded 550 Million in 2014

International visitor arrivals into the Asia Pacific region exceeded 550 million during calendar year 2014, an annual increase of close to 6%.

According to the just released ‘PATA Annual Tourism Monitor 2015 (Early Edition)’, Asia captured 73% of those arrivals, followed by the Americas with a 23% share and the Pacific with the remaining 4%.

Of the 44 Asia Pacific destinations covered in the report, 30 had foreign inbound volumes in excess of one million for the year with 12 of that number exceeding 10 million.

The rank order saw no change in 2015, with the top five destinations (by volume) remaining (in order) as China, the USA, Hong Kong SAR, Turkey and Macau SAR.

By annual percentage growth there were some extremely strong performances, with 10 of the destinations reporting increases in the double-digit range. Palau, Bhutan, Japan, Myanmar and Chinese Taipei headed the list with growth ranging from 34% (Palau) to 23.6% (Chinese Taipei).

From a source market perspective, there were of course, extreme variations by destination region, with Canada, Mexico and the USA dominating flows into the Americas, and the USA, Japan and Australia doing likewise into the Pacific.

Asia was generally dominated by arrivals from China and the SARs of Hong Kong and Macau, however once again there were significant sub-regional variations. For Northeast Asia for example, those same three origin markets dominated but in a slightly different order. Based on volume the top three were Hong Kong SAR, China and Macau SAR.

South Asia saw the top inbound source markets as China, India and the UK while Southeast Asia had Singapore, China and Indonesia dominate the volume of foreign inbound arrivals.

West Asia had a completely different mix of foreign arrivals in 2014 with Germany, the Russian Federation and the UK topping the list of arrivals by volume.

PATA CEO Mario Hardy, said, “Reviewing the growth patterns and distribution of visitor arrivals into Asia Pacific over a past five-year period gives us a solid perspective on how these flows are becoming more fluid, shifting and moving between both origin and destination markets ... In that sense, this report provides a balance between PATA’s quarterly summation of origin-destination pairs and at the other extreme, the best predictions of how they are expected to play out over the future five-year period. It is undoubtedly an essential tool in placing the possible future firmly in the context of what has already occurred.”