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Global Recession Hurting Asia-Pacific Tourism
By travelanswerman | March 11, 2009
The global recession has hit hard the tourism sector of Asian countries. A drop in the business of airlines, hotels and tourism is inevitable, and there will be fewer tourists this year is quite natural.
The varied culture, geography, the unusualness, the gem tourist spots like the Himalayan kingdoms, the neon-lit capitals and the ruins of Khmer, the beautiful beaches made Asia a leading region for tourism in the recent past. But the effects of the global economic slowdown are looming large on the tourism of the Asian countries.
Laurence Lai – the owner of the two Hong Kong tourist hotspots’ photo gallery expects a 30 % decline in the tourists this year. Most of the airlines, tour operators and hotels are thinking in lines of making tight and shorter budget trips to incur the least loss possible.
With the political turmoil and the global recession worsening last year, the Indian, Hong Kong and Thailand travel markets are suffering shrinkage. Many will have negative growth this year. While a 9 % decrease in tourists in 2009 is expected in Thailand and Malaysia, there was 2 % fall in Singapore last year with possibilities to decline more in the present year. According to STR Global, the occupancy rates of hotels in the region of Asia Pacific declined to 66.7 % in last November against 76.4 % the year before.
The political instability along with the changing of the government policies have worsened more the matter and affected the tourism sector particularly in countries like Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Macau. The Mumbai attacks in late last year, the weeklong siege of Bangkok’s airports and the visa control by the communist leaders of Beijing on the Chinese visitors in Macau made a negative impact in the minds of the tourists. It is so obvious that tourists will prefer to go to other holiday destinations.
In comparison to the tourism demands of America, Middle East, Africa and Europe, the region of Asia-Pacific’s tourism has “deteriorated most rapidly”, as claimed by UN’s World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). A worst possible business crisis is on hold for the global airlines, with millions losing their jobs, bad revenues and airlines coming to a halt are being predicted by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
However, despite all these problems, the expectation that the tourism of Asia-Pacific will be back and enjoy 4-5% average growth in the coming three years is predicted by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA).
Source: www.hotelresortinsider.com www.travelanswerman.com
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March 12th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
[...] World Tourism Organization, says that Europe will likely see the largest decline in tourism, but there are murmurs of massive drops of the number of tourists in East Asia, and the IMF says that Africa will suffer [...]