International visitor arrival numbers to increase across Asia Pacific in 2022

The PATA Asia Pacific Visitor Forecasts 2022-2024 released by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) predicts annual changes in international visitor arrivals across the region to turn positive versus 2021 under each of the mild, medium, and severe scenarios in 2022, with growth rates ranging between 126% and 84%.

While it is a positive and welcome development after two years of extremely difficult conditions, the international travel and tourism sector of the Asia Pacific region still has much to repair and revitalise. The forecasted increases in inbound visitor numbers in 2022, for example, still only return them to 23-45% of the level of foreign arrivals received in pre-pandemic 2019.

The increase in the absolute number of international visitor arrivals is predicted therefore to range from 72.5 million to 175.7 million under the severe and mild scenarios respectively, lifting the total volume of visitor arrivals to between 159 million and 315 million, under those same scenarios respectively.

Moving forward to 2024, International Visitor arrivals growth over the next three years is projected to be positive, with the volume of International Visitor arrivals in 2024 being equal to, or better than that of 2019.