According to preliminary figures released by the Pacific Asia Travel Association, international visitor arrivals into Asia and the Pacific have shown a year-on-year increase of 5% for the first quarter of 2011.

This is driven by the strong performance for South and Southeast Asia, which grew by 13% and 10% in terms of visitor arrivals for the quarter, respectively.

However, the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan has inevitably affected its inbound and outbound travel flows, with neighbouring destinations including China, Hong Kong and South Korea recording subsequent declines in the number of Japanese visitors for the first quarter of the year.

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