The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) released its PATAmPOWER report which says that the region expects to attract more than 630m international visitors in 2017. This is the most recent five-year 2017-2021 forecast for the Asia Pacific visitor economy.
PATA estimates that ‘collective’ foreign arrivals into 39 Asia Pacific destinations will grow by 5.9% this year compared with 2016, representing an additional 35m foreign arrivals to the region this year. PATA said in a statement that between 2017-2021, foreign arrivals into Asia Pacific are expected to grow at an average rate of five per cent per annum, reaching a combined foreign inbound count of close to 758m.”. “By 2021 the Americas (as defined by PATA) will be receiving 156m foreign arrivals annually, while Asia can expect to receive over 573m. The Pacific is forecast to receive over 28m foreign arrivals annually. China, Hong Kong SAR, the USA, Korea (ROK) and Canada will all remain in the top five traffic-generating markets for the Asia Pacific region.
PATA also predicts that the Russian Federation will generate four million foreign visitor arrivals to the Asia Pacific by 2021 and take the third-place ranking in absolute volume terms over 2017, following China and Hong Kong SAR. Other destinations including Thailand (+37.5%), Lao PDR (+9.7%) and Korea (ROK) (+7.5%) will register the highest average annual growth from the Russian Federation over the next five years, while a few destinations such as Hong Kong SAR (-5.0%), Cambodia (-3.6%) and the Northern Marianas (-2.3%) are expected to face a slowdown in numbers from this source market.
Counting on the uncertainty factors, Kuwait will top the source market chart in percentage growth terms with an average growth rate of 63% annually between 2017 and 2021, followed by Finland (31%). Also, Iraq and Myanmar are predicted to rank far behind with these source markets each contracting by around -15% annually over the same forecasting period.
PATA CEO Dr Mario Hardy said that “although visitor arrivals growth remains impressively strong for destinations in the Asia Pacific region over the next five years, ongoing global economic uncertainty, coupled with rising political populism in the USA and Europe will present a continued challenge to and impact upon disposable income of travel consumers, travel demand and movement between countries”.
