Figures recently published by PATA show record numbers of international visitors to the Asia Pacific region.
The PATA Annual Travel Monitor 2007, published by the Association’s Strategic Intelligence Centre (SIC), states that almost 376 million international visitor arrivals were recorded last year – up from around 347 million in 2006.
The strongest year-on-year growth performance in 2007 was in southeast Asia, a region which includes traditional tourist and traveller hotspots such as Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia, with a 12.2 per-cent increase. However, all destination sub-regions in Asia showed encouraging levels of growth.
The Americas reached 90.29 million for the first time. Only the Pacific sub-region struggled to maintain momentum with international arrivals showing a modest 0.8 per cent rise at 18.672 million.
The top ten performing destinations in 2007 were led by Papua New Guinea, although the recorded growth of 34 per cent against 2006 is off a relatively small numeric base. Four Pacific island nations make the 2007 top ten.