550 million people visited Asia-Pacific in 2014: PATA

Over half a billion international travellers visited the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region during last year to record almost six per cent year-on-year growth, according to the early edition of the PATA Annual Tourism Monitor 2015.

The report collates visitor arrivals information from 44 destinations across PATA's defined scope of APAC, which includes countries like the US and Russia as well as regions such as South-east Asia, West Asia, South America and the Pacific islands.

Of the 550 million visitors to APAC, it was found that Asia had the lion’s share of arrivals with 73 per cent of travellers, followed by the Americas with a 23 per cent slice of the pie. The Pacific took home the remaining four per cent. 

The list of top five destinations by volume saw no change from 2014. China saw the most tourists, followed by the US, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Macau.

Two-thirds of destinations in the report had foreign inbound numbers of at least one million and 12 of these posted 10 million arrivals.

PATA’s report also stated that 10 destinations had scored double-digit percentage increases in tourist arrivals in 2014. Palau (34 per cent) and Taipei (23.6 per cent) were two of these, while Bhutan, Japan and Myanmar also performed impressively.

On source markets, China, Hong Kong and Macau dominated Asian destinations in terms of absolute numbers but this varied across sub-regions. These three markets held true for North-east Asia, but China, India and the UK ruled for South Asia.

In South-east Asia, travellers from Singapore, China and Indonesia made up the bulk of arrivals, West Asia tends to play host to a completely different profile of travellers. Germans, Russians and UK citizens top the list of arrivals there by volume.

Commenting in a press release, PATA’s CEO Mario Hardy said: “Reviewing the growth patterns and distribution of visitor arrivals into Asia-Pacific over a past five-year period gives us a solid perspective on how these flows are becoming more fluid, shifting and moving between both origin and destination markets.”

-TTG Asia.