Global tourism is recovering, but for Asia it’s a mixed bag at best
- UN Tourism forecasts a full recovery this year but the data is skewed by the robust recovery in Europe; across Asia, arrivals remain well below 2019 levels
- Also, how quickly Chinese tourists will re-establish their position as the world’s largest group of top spenders is uncertain
Talk to the UN world tourism organisation – since January rebranded as UN Tourism – and the message is that international tourism is well on the road to recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. But talk to tourism officials in Hong Kong, South Korea, mainland China or Thailand and the story is: not so fast.
According to the UN’s Tourism Recovery Tracker, global tourism last year recovered to within 12 per cent of the pre-Covid level, and is forecast to fully recover this year.
The World Tourism Barometer reported almost 1.3 billion tourists last year, a 34 per cent rebound from 2022. Tourism export revenues rallied to an estimated US$1.6 trillion, just 5 per cent short of 2019’s, after collapsing in 2020. But behind these numbers was a more variable picture.
International arrivals in Europe last year were just 6 per cent short of the 2019 peak. And since they accounted for 54 per cent of the global total of nearly 1.29 million (France remains the world’s most popular destination), Europe’s recovery powerfully skewed the numbers.
Asia welcomed just 233 million international tourists last year, still 35 per cent below 2019. Traveller numbers into northeast Asia (including China, South Korea and Japan) are still down by 45 per cent from 2019, and for Southeast Asia, down by nearly 30 per cent.
UN Tourism’s forecast of a full recovery this year includes a significant caveat: it is “subject to the pace of recovery in Asia and to the evolution of existing economic and geopolitical challenges”. It added that “tourists are expected to increasingly seek value for money and travel closer to home, in response to elevated prices and the overall economic challenges”.
And when they say Asia, they are considering China in particular, which is in the thick of the “economic and geopolitical challenges” they refer to. According to China’s National Immigration Administration, international visitors jumped sevenfold from 2022 to 35.5 million last year, after Covid restrictions were lifted, but remains just one third of the 2019 volume.
According to a recent EIU report, mainlanders made 101 million “cross-border trips” last year – down from 168 million in 2019. Of this 101 million, 77 million trips were to Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan, with just 23.9 million further afield – about 36 per cent of 2019 levels.
How quickly Chinese tourists will re-establish their position as the world’s largest group of top spenders depends on a number of factors.
Despite the challenges, the potential for mainland travellers to swamp the world’s tourism markets remains considerable.
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Estimates made back in 2020 predicted that the pandemic would strip over US$4 trillion from the global economy, and extinguish over 60 million jobs. No recent publicly available estimates have clarified or confirmed these estimates, but for many whose livelihoods depend on the travel and tourism sector, this kind of recovery cannot come soon enough – particularly in Asia, where we still have a long way to go.
David Dodwell is CEO of the trade policy and international relations consultancy Strategic Access, focused on developments and challenges facing the Asia-Pacific over the past four decades