Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, and Seoul were the stars of Asia Pacific as the region’s most popular travel destinations in 2018.
These 5 countries garnered the region’s 25.2% of all travel expenditure from 161 cities studied by Mastercard’s annual Asia Pacific Destinations Index.
Asia Pacific’s top 4 most popular destinations in 2018 remained unchanged – Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Tokyo.
Asia Pacific Impressive Numbers
For overnight international arrivals, Bangkok welcomed 22.8 million visitors, while 14.7 million people visited Singapore. Kuala Lumpur also impresses with its 13.8 million travel guests. Tokyo, which attracted 12.9 million guests, got the 4th spot. South Korea’s Seoul found its way to the 5th spot with 11.3 million visitors.
These impressive numbers highlight the rise of Asia Pacific’s inward travel over the past decade.
Last year was a busy period for the Asia Pacific region as it accommodated 342.2 million business and leisure trips. From $117.6 billion in 2009, the travel spend more than doubled to $281.1 billion in 2018.
The region’s top 20 cities garnered an impressive 49.8% of that billion-dollar worth of visitor trips. The surge was pushed further by outbound Chinese travelers whose numbers increased from 10.5 million in 2009 to 62.4 million in 2018. China is not only the world’s second-largest economy but the second largest outbound travel market as well.
As of today, the United States remains as the leader of the world’s outbound travel market.
Osaka, Phuket, Pattaya, Bali, and Hong Kong completed the top 10.
Japan’s Okinawa surged as Asia Pacific’s fastest-growing travel destination, climbing 109 places in the ranking since 2009.
A surprising state, just behind Okinawa, was India’s Ludhiana, located at India’s northern state Punjab. Ludhiana is clearly a competitive one as it was able to jump 78 places in rankings in the past decade.
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