The global tourism boom is shifting to Asia
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Tourism is back, at last. This year the number of trips abroad is expected to overtake levels reached in 2019.
Spending by travellers, too, is projected to exceed what was shelled out in 2019, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), a trade body. Cruising is afloat again. The return of mass tourism has sparked protests in Western hotspots such as Barcelona and Majorca.
Talk to a hotelier or a travel agent, though, and the real action is further east. Travel to Asia had been slower to recover from the covid-19 pandemic than in the West. Strict quarantine measures from China to Malaysia were in place for longer than in Europe or America, keeping the number of tourists down.
Now, however, business on the continent is roaring back. The number of travellers arriving in Asian countries is set to surge by a third this year, according to the WTTC, more than in any other region (see chart). Even as business in the rest of the world stabilises, industry bosses are touting rapid growth in Asia.
On August 6th Michael Glover, the finance chief of IHG, a hotel group, pointed to its booming business in Thailand and Vietnam. On August 7th Mark Galardo, an executive at Air Canada, a carrier, said that new routes to Seoul and Osaka were performing “exceedingly well". Westerners are turning up in droves.
The number of trips Americans took to Asia doubled last year. The dollar, which has appreciated strongly against Asian currencies, is part of the explanation. Catherine Heald, the boss of Remote Lands, a travel agency for the rich, notes that more of her clients are scuba diving off Indonesia’s Komodo island, temple-hopping in Japan and taking gastronomical excursions across Thailand.
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