The results confirm both the sustained growth path of the past years and the resilience of the tourism sector. The strong growth has been supported by a strong world economy, which has experienced the longest period of sustained growth for more than two ‘decades.

UNWTO Tourism Barometer

According to the latest UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, all regions of the world registered increases in tourism arrivals above their long- term average. The Middle East led the regional growth rankings, with an estimated 13 per cent rise, and is emerging as a strong tourism destination, with visitor numbers climbing much faster than for the world overall. In second place was Asia Pacific, up by 10 per cent, followed by Africa and the Americas, while the US doubled its growth rate. Europe - the world’s largest destination region, with a share of over 50 per cent of all international tourist arrivals - grew by four per cent,LMD reported.

SRI LANKA

The picture for Sri Lanka is rather mixed. The island recorded the worst performance (-12%) in South Asia. Having reached a high of 560,000 arrivals in 2006, Sri Lanka failed to match its own lower target of 500,000 and dropped to 494,000 arrivals in 2007. The sharpest drop was in May (-40%), following the LTTE attack on the Bandaranaike International Airport and a subsequent curfew imposed on night flights. Demand did not really pick up until November, but the last two months of the year showed robust gains in arrivals of 20 and 50 per cent respectively. December’s growth was due to the test-cricket series with England, which attracted 10,000 fans. In addition, the Middle Eastern market recorded a 29 per cent increase from January through November and other markets showed healthy turnarounds.Of the additional 52 million worldwide tourist arrivals in 2007, Europe received some 19 million, Asia-Pacific 17 million and the Americas around six million.

"Economic and tourism growth are driven by emerging markets and developing economies. While mature markets remain the leading destinations in the world, the faster growth rate of new markets confirms the main message of tourism’s potential for the developing world," says WTO Secretary General Francesco Frangialli. Experts from around the world who contributed to the World Tourism Barometer have been upbeat about recent trends. Their expectations for this year remain positive, implying a continuation of growth, albeit with a gradual slow down compared to previous years.

ASIA

The Asia-Pacific region, with a background of strong growth of seven per cent since 2000, continued its growth momentum to record a 10 per cent increase in 2007, attracting 185 million visitors. This was the world’s second-best-performing region after the Middle East. Asia included the world’s top-two best-performing sub-regions - South-East Asia (+12%) and North-East Asia (+10%) - with South Asia (+8 %) also among the leaders in terms of annual growth.

In fact, only the Pacific sub-region (+1 %) was well under the regional average. ‘Asia’s healthy performance is all the more remarkable given that it reflects sustained growth achieved by the region over the past few years. The year 2004 marked a record in terms of percentage growth (+27%), but it was followed by further increases of eight per cent in both 2005 and 2006 - even after the December 2004 tsunami - and now an even more impressive 10 per cent in 2007.

While Japan (+14%) has taken off as a destination, Malaysia (+20%), Cambodia (+19%) and China (+10%) keep improving their growth rates.

All the South-Asian countries recorded double-digit increases in arrivals during 2007, apart from Sri Lanka (-12%) and Pakistan (-7%). India (+13%) and the Maldives (+12 %) sustained good growth, with the Maldives now fully recovered from the impact of the tsunami. The other good news for South Asia is Nepal’s 27 per cent increase, making it the best-performing destination in the subregion in 2007. The surge in arrivals, coming after the signing of the peace agreement to end the 10-year Maoist insurgency, has driven average occupancy in Nepal to 82 per cent. No official data for Bangladesh is available, although the industry is estimating an increase of 27 per cent. The demand for tourism in Pakistan is likely to remain unstable in the short term, given recent political events.

OTHER REGIONS

The Middle East totalled 46 million international tourist arrivals and continues to be one of tourism’s success stories of the decade. The Americas regained vigour and more than doubled its growth rate after the two per cent growth of 2006, backed by the rebound of the US in bound market (+10%) and the strong performance of Central and South American destinations, which were favoured by the strong Euro and steady tourism flows from the US. Europe is growing above average and totalled 480 million tourists in 2007. Africa is now averaging seven per cent growth a year since 2000. Awareness of South Africa has continued to grow in the build-up to the country’s hosting of the FIFA Soccer World Cup in 2010.

RESILENCE

Results for 2007 confirm tourism’s resilience against external factors such as turbulence in financial markets, increasing interest rates, tighter credit conditions, rising fuel prices, and security and health issues. This has been considerably buoyed by the strong world economy. Since 2004, world economic output has experienced the longest period of sustained growth for more than two decades. Economic and tourism growth has been driven to a great extent by emerging markets and developing countries, as seen from the 2007 data. While the more mature developed countries grew at the still respectable rate of 5.1 per cent, the emerging markets and developing countries grew at 7.7 per cent.

Access to last-minute inventory through online channels has continued to stimulate latent demand in more mature source markets, but also increasingly -in less mature travel regions such as Asia and the Pacific, where accessible pricing has opened up travel to an increasing number of people.