The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) expects “strong annual growth” this year in international visitor arrivals “into and across” Asia Pacific (APAC), according to a recent press release. Arrivals should “exceed pre-pandemic 2019 levels for the first time in 2024,” under what the organisation termed its “mild” positive scenario, at just below 741.0 million people.
In 2019, the number of international visitor arrivals to APAC stood at 682.7 million, showed the data published by the association.
PATA however said that “challenges persist” for the tourism industry. Were the association’s “severe scenario” realised, it would put 2024 arrivals at 31 percent below 2019 levels, at 471.5 million.
The announcement quoted PATA chief executive, Noor Ahmad Hamid, as saying: “The severe scenario forecasts remind us that while things are positive right now, with growth projections generally bullish, dangers still loom.”
He added: “Geopolitical tensions, the effects of climate change and economic uncertainty prove to be sources of obstacles to Asia Pacific tourism growth, highlighting the critical need for continuous efforts to create innovative solutions that could effectively combat such challenges.”
While the association noted that “uneven recovery rates” between each region and sub-region within Asia Pacific exist, international visitor arrivals numbers for Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific have all been predicted to exceed 2019 levels this year, under the organisation’s “mild scenario” forecast.
“The momentum is predicted to continue into 2025 and 2026, with international visitor arrivals numbers across all three destination regions forecasted to surpass those of 2019,” added PATA.
The association’s “severe scenario” forecasts are much lower than its medium and mild forecasts. While arrival numbers are still predicted to continue trending upwards to the 2019 level by the end of 2026, they do so at very much slower rates under the “severe scenario” projection.
Under PATA’s “medium scenario” forecast, the destination sub-regions of Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia lead the pack in terms of expected annual increases in absolute numbers of international visitor arrivals, with “gains of 44.6 million and 36.2 million, respectively”.
According to the association, the “drivers” of much of the expansion between 2023 and 2024 “are very much the Northeast Asia source markets”.
China, Macau, and South Korea are expected to “add 35.9 million, 8.5 million, and 7.6 million additional international visitor arrivals to the Asia Pacific count, respectively,” stated PATA.
Macau received nearly 14.2 million visitors in ther first five months of 2024, up 50.2 percent from the prior-year period. The figure represented about 82.4 percent of the just under 17.2 million arrivals in the first five months of 2019.
Visitors from mainland China, Macau’s main tourism feeder market, represented about 69.8 percent of all arrivals in the five months to May 31 this year, at 9.89 million, according to official data.