Tourism takes a hit in most Asia-Pacific nations

By M H Ahssan

India’s tourism industry may have suffered the double whammy of recession and the Mumbai terror attacks, but other countries in the Asia-Pacific region have not remained unscathed.

While growth of foreign tourist arrivals to India dropped from a high of 14% in 2007 to 5.6% in 2008, countries like Thailand, China and Singapore have registered a negative growth. The average growth for tourism in the world, according to United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), is 2% for 2009, down from 6% in 2008.

A Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) report on the Asia-Pacific region records India in the 8th position above China, but below smaller countries like Indonesia, Macau and Fiji in growth of foreign tourist arrivals.

While Indonesia tops the chart with the maximum growth of 15.4% in foreign tourist arrivals, Macau boasted an increase of 11.8% in times of global recession. Fiji (8%), Chile (7.7%) and Cambodia (7.1%) are part of the top 5 countries with the highest growth in the region followed by South Korea and Mexico. Though growth in India has dropped, the tourism industry has been reassured by the foreign tourist arrivals in February this year. Arrivals are up from 4.87 lakh in January 2009 to 5.02 lakh in February 2009.

While there is an increase in actual numbers in February 2009, a comparison with the tourist arrivals for the same period in 2008 shows a 10% drop. However, this is better than the 17% drop in arrivals for January 2009 as compared to January 2008.

The tourism ministry has, as part of its initiative to promote the Visit India 2009 campaign, added a component by which wellness resorts have been roped in to provide one free night stay for three nights booked by a tourist. “The ministry in partnership with hotels, airlines and tour operators has already announced various offers like an ecoholiday free for a tourist. We have recently put wellness resorts as an additional component,” Sujit Banerjee, tourism secretary, said.

At the same time, countries whose economies have been largely driven by tourism like Thailand and Singapore have shown a drop in growth. While China saw a drop of 1.4% in its growth, tourist arrivals in Singapore dropped by 1.6% while in Thailand the drop was at 5%.