PATA: Arrivals at Asia-Pacific destinations to keep growing

Preliminary estimates indicate that the rate of growth over that period will average between 5-6 per cent per annum to generate an aggregate inbound count of more than 670 million by the end of 2019.
PATA chief executive officer Mario Hardy said: “According to the PATA visitor arrivals forecasts, 38 destinations in the period 2015 to 2019 will see more than 158 million additional international visitor arrivals. Asia as a destination region will grow faster, at between 6 and 7 per cent, over that period and receive in excess of half a billion foreign visitors by the end of the forecast period.”
Asia will not only benefit from this increased travel volume, but also will be a major generator of that demand both within the Asia region and well beyond. European source markets will also remain valuable to the Asia-Pacific region and are expected to generate close to 50 million arrivals into the region annually by 2019.
“These forecasts provide a valuable quantification of the expected future trends of travel demand for the Asia-Pacific and allow for risk assessments to be made well ahead of the curve,” Hardy said.
“With past forecasts coming to within 2 per cent of actual performance at the Asia-Pacific level, we believe that they provide a valid and accurate tool for today’s marketers, planners and strategists as they face the volatile challenges in today’s global tourism marketplace.”
The 2015-19 forecasts are a joint production of the tourism-forecasting unit within the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and PATA.
They provide detailed projections for individual source and generating markets at both quarterly and annual levels over the same period, along with a number of other metrics including tourism receipts and, where data are available, departures predictions.