ASIA PACIFIC. New data shared by travel intelligence expert ForwardKeys shows an accelerating recovery in Asia Pacific travel markets. The rate of recovery, however, is marked by significant differences between short/medium haul, long haul and domestic flights in the region.
Long haul (-23% against pre-pandemic 2019) and domestic (-44%) flights are getting closer to 2019 volumes, according to the travel analyst’s data on booked flights for Q4. Short/medium haul flights booked for Q4, meanwhile, trail the 2019 figure by -69%.
ForwardKeys noted that this is a very different trend from the recovery pattern observed previously in the Americas and Europe, where intra-regional short flights recovered faster than long-haul travel.
The analyst explained the contrasting rates of recovery by citing two factors. Firstly, the absence of the Chinese market and secondly, the faster recovery of the VFR (visiting friends and relatives) segment, a pattern also observed after the reopening of other regions.
In the case of Asia Pacific, ForwardKeys noted, a big part of VFR travel comes from long-haul markets in the Middle East, Europe or North America.
Looking at the performance of individual countries in October, the travel analyst revealed that after recently reopening its borders, Japan has returned to the top five countries for inbound international travel in the region. However, by this measure, the number of passengers are at just 23% of 2019 volumes.
In terms of October passenger volumes, South Korea is the top outbound market from Asia Pacific, with steady improvement in recovery measured against 2019 (31% of pre-pandemic numbers). However, in terms of recovery against 2019 numbers in this category, Malaysia is the top performer with 73% of the pre-pandemic passenger figure recovered in October.
Another takeaway offered by ForwardKeys for October is that intra-regional business travel across Asia Pacific countries (27% of 2019 levels) is recovering faster than leisure travel (22%).
ForwardKeys Market Analysts Nan Dai said: “The recovery is still ongoing as demand is still growing, albeit not as fast as we would have liked to see with domestic tourism operators the first to appreciate the return to travel in APAC.”
