Two years after the end of the pandemic, the tourism industry in the APAC region continues to struggle and only three countries have managed to surpass their historic high in visitor arrivals attained in 2018 by 2024.

This is remarkable since in most other parts of the world tourism has registered major gains since. Maldives, Japan, and Cambodia present very different formulae in advancing their tourism sectors, yet evidently, they seem to succeed where no other market in the region can stand their ground. The total figure for visitor arrivals among the 17 markets reviewed trails pre-pandemic highs by 12.9%.

Only Macau SAR, Malaysia, and Vietnam are quasi recovered with ratios above 90%. At the bottom of the table, Guam, CNMI, make for a sorry lot with recovery below 50% joined by Taiwan and Hong Kong SAR posting recovery below 70%.

One major reason of course is the absence of the Chinese outbound market. Given the challenges in the domestic economy, outbound tourism collapsed – particularly in the value-oriented segment, further exacerbated by bans for zero-dollar tourism.

The recovery in Chinese outbound tourism will unlikely come with a bang. Destinations are working to stimulate alternative source markets, for example India. However, geopolitics and specifically airspace restrictions due to the war in Ukraine continue to challenge the (European) long-haul market.

New Zealand’s visitor arrivals were looking up in 2024, reaching 3.3 million – an increase of 12 percent over 2023. Visitor numbers from Australia are currently at about 88% of 2019 levels and remained the largest source of visitors, with 1.4 million arrivals, followed by the United States (370,000), China (248,000), the United Kingdom (180,000), and India (83,000). December 2024 saw 469,800 visitor arrivals, up 51,000 (12 per cent) from December 2023. It was the highest monthly total since December 2019, when 528,200 visitors arrived before international travel was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2024, visitor numbers were 89 per cent of the level recorded in December 2019. The government is aiming to further boost tourism via a new marketing campaign – “Everyone must go!”.

In 2024, Laos welcomed more than 4 million tourists, with an increase of almost one million visitors compared to 2023. The top 10 countries contributing to this success with the highest number of visitors were Thailand, Vietnam, China, Korea, France, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Thailand led the way with 1.2 million tourists, followed by Vietnam and China both with just above 1 million. The rise in visitor numbers to Laos is attributed to the country’s increased exposure on several international travel websites as well as the success of the 2024 Visit Laos Year campaign.

As part of this initiative, Laos granted special visa exemptions to more than 30 countries, including China, the United States, and eight European countries. However, visitor arrivals still trailed the record of 4.79 million in 2019.
 
The chart below outlines the visitor arrivals to countries and regions in Asia Pacific.

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