ASIA PACIFIC. Despite the strong fourth quarter growth of +8.5% in international visitor arrivals to Asia Pacific overall (versus 2016), the region’s key market for duty free and travel retail sales saw a sharp slump in numbers.
According to the data from the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) – based on the 30 markets that have released Q4 data – Asia Pacific’s inbound total reach 94.8 million.
However, Northeast Asia witnessed a decline in the total visitor arrival count of -20%, mainly due to the political situation in South Korea where there was a significant decline of Chinese arrivals by over -40%. Japan, on the other hand, had solid arrivals growth from China of +31.4% during the period.
In South Asia, after having recovered from a major earthquake in 2015, Nepal reported the strongest increase of +23.7% in Q4, driven largely by a +22.3% rise in visitor arrivals from India. India itself also had a robust surge in visitors, up +15.7%.
Vietnam and Thailand led Southeast Asia in growth terms, up by +31.8% and +19.5% respectively.
The Cook Islands dominated the Pacific region in percentage growth with an increase of +10.2% in Q4 ahead of Fiji and Hawaii, each with the same growth of +5.7%.
China remains the key source market for Asia Pacific destinations. The Philippines saw a remarkable leap of +79.3% from China in the fourth quarter, but other nations also had very robust rises. Chinese visits to Thailand were up by +67.2% to 2.4 million, Vietnam by +51.2% to 1.1 million and Cambodia by +46.2% to 369,400.
