In the just-released Executive Summary of the Asia Pacific Visitor Forecasts 2021-2023 by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), three growth prospects for international visitors arrivals (IVAs) into and across 39 Asia Pacific destinations are made, covering mild, medium and severe scenarios.
The report shows that even under a mild scenario, the Asia Pacific region in 2023 is likely to still have around 4% fewer arrivals compared to 2019.
The medium scenario suggests that foreign visitor numbers in 2023 could be only three-quarters of the 2019 volume, while under the severe scenario, that proportion is predicted to reach less than half of the 2019 volume of international arrivals.
The results are very uneven as well, not just under each scenario but also for the major destination regions of Asia Pacific. The Americas for example, after reaching a total of 45.36 million foreign arrivals in 2020 into the four destinations covered by this region, is unlikely to see any annual increase in IVAs until 2022.
The calendar year 2021 in particular, is projected to be another difficult year for the Americas. A further annual decline in foreign arrival numbers is expected, with annual losses ranging from 3.59 million to as much as almost 23.76 million, depending upon the scenario conditions at the time.
IVAs into and across Asia on the other hand, are expected to show an increase in 2021 over the 70.64 million received in 2020, but only under the mild scenario. From 2022 onwards, however, annual increases are forecast to gradually improve in volume under each of the three scenarios.
The only differing characteristic is the volume of the annual increase in each case.
The Pacific is expected to be in a similar position as the Americas in 2021, with IVAs falling from the 5.85 million received in 2020 under each of the three scenarios. While that decrease may be relatively minor under the mild scenario, it could still represent a contraction of almost five million IVAs under the severe scenario.
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