Asian tourism on knife edge

Bangkok - Asia's tourism industry may bounce back from the global financial crisis sooner than other regions, but it is in such a fragile state that another shock could be disastrous, a senior industry official said on Thursday.

The Pacific Asia Travel Association, an industry lobby, forecast an average 4.2% annual growth in tourist arrivals from this year through to 2011, with a mild recovery showing later this year or in early 2010.

Tourist arrivals across the region are expected to grow by only 3.5% in 2009, the group said in a report released on Thursday.

However, tourist businesses in the Asia-Pacific were "extremely vulnerable" so that one more shock like the scare over the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and "the wheels will fall off our industry," said John Koldowski, the body's director for strategic intelligence.

Hotel occupancy in the Asia-Pacific region fell to 65.5% in December, compared with 70.6% in the same month in 2007.

Most countries in the region have acted quickly to promote themselves as relatively cheap places to visit and have tried to encourage domestic tourism, the report said.

This strategy proved most successful in South Korea were arrivals were up by about 25% in January and February year-on-year, while Taiwan and India were able to slow the fall in arrivals.

However tourist numbers were shrinking in China, Thailand and Japan, which was hit hardest with arrivals down 40% in February.

Tourism arrivals globally climbed by about a third to 924 million in 2008 since the end of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, but tourist arrivals in the Asia-Pacific region nearly doubled over the same period to 385 million in 2008.

While the industry body expects tourism to continue growing, the expansion may be less pronounced than predicted in earlier forecasts.

- Sapa