Tourist arrivals in the Asia-Pacific region during the first seven months of this year have jumped nearly 30 percent, driven primarily by travel within Asia, the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) said yesterday.
According to PATA's latest data for the first seven months of this year, arrivals to the Asia-Pacific region -- comprising the Americas, Asia, the Pacific islands and Oceania -- reached 172.4 million, up 27.9 percent compared with 134.0 million for the same period last year.
"The highest volume gains are in Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia respectively, while the greatest percentage gains see that position reversed, with Southeast Asia growing 45.2 percent and Northeast Asia by 31.7 percent," said PATA's latest "state-of-play" report on Asia-Pacific travel and tourism.
China notched up the greatest outflow of tourists during the first seven months of this year: close to 16 million, or an increase of 64 per cent over the same period last year.
"China will probably shatter the 30 million outbound mark this year," said John Koldowski, managing director of PATA's strategic intelligence division.
The surge in outbound travel from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the US appears to be driving the tourism revival, PATA said.
"If we look at the Asia-Pacific today the news is astounding," Koldowski said. "Anywhere else in the world, growth of 30 percent is unheard of."
Koldowski acknowledged that part of the phenomenal growth was due to the extreme slump in travel to the region last year, when the outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong, China and parts of Southeast Asia, kept droves of tourists away.
Last year, tourist arrivals to the Asia-Pacific reached 256.3 million, down 6.7 per cent from the 274.8 million in 2002, with the drop attributed primarily to the SARS scare rather than terrorism fears and war worries.
"A different type of health threat [bird flu], if well founded, would be potentially devastating to tourist arrival numbers," PATA warned.
In contrast to booming tourism development in the Asia-Pacific, Taiwan has faced falling overseas tourism figures in recent years.
For the first eight months of the year, the number of foreign visitors totalled 1,890,604, a decline of 2.79 percent from the same period in 2002, according to statistics released by the Tourism Bureau last month.
Statistics for last year were not counted because the nation was hit by the SARS epidemic, the bureau said.
But the bureau pointed to growth in the month of August, when tourist arrivals rose 3 percent to 253,000, compared with the same month a year earlier.
Additional reporting by Jackie Lin
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