Tourism Mega Trends in Asia Pacific

Tourism Mega Trends in
Asia Pacific
Professor Haiyan Song
Chair Professor and Associate Director
School of Hotel and Tourism Management
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Introduction
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A Joint research project between UNWTO and
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Media content analysis of travel trade
magazines– TravelWeekly & TTG Asia (2005)
766 articles analyzed and 529 articles
categorized into four sub-regions: North-east
Asia, South-east Asia, South Asia and Oceania
Use both the ‘qualitative’ text analysis software
ATLAS.ti and the statistical software BiPlot to
identify tourism trends in Asia-Pacific
Methods
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Qualitative analysis provides a holistic conceptual
framework that expresses relationships between
codes (through ATLAS.ti’s Network View)
Codes are associated with quotations that are
composed of sentence(s) and paragraph(s). This
results in a richer content analysis by reading
‘beyond’ keywords
Visual presentation of commonalities and
differences among subregional trends by
conducting correspondence analysis (CA)
Methods
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Check trends that had been previously identified and used
them as a basis to further identify other trends
• UNWTO (2005) Tourism Highlights 2005
identified the following trends:
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(1) rapid development and growth of e-commerce
and e-marketing,
(2) fast track travel – the facilitation and speeding up
of the travel process, and
(3) everyone is chasing Asian tourists
Read the whole texts, created free quotations and coded
them at the same time (Using ATLAS.ti)
Methods

Check trends that had been previously identified and used
them as a basis to further identify other trends
• UNWTO (2005) Tourism Highlights 2005
identified the following trends:
(1) rapid development and growth of e-commerce
and e-marketing,
 (2) fast track travel – the facilitation and speeding up
of the travel process, and
 (3) everyone chasing Asian tourists
Read the whole texts, created free quotations and coded
them at the same time


• 82 codes were first created and 72 of them were later
combined into 18 code families (Using ATLAS.ti)
Methods: Codes Families
AI: Aviation Industry
HI: Hotel Industry
PI: Political Influence/Exchange
Rate
AO: Activity Oriented
HR: Human Resources
PO: Polarization
BT: Business Travel
IF: India Fever
RTO: Regional Tourism
Organization
CC: Competition/Cooperation
IM: Image/Rebranding
SE: Social-Environmental
Consciousness
CF: China Fever
IN: Infrastructure
SH: Safety & Health
DN: Demographic Niche
Market
IR: Intra-regional Travel
SW: Shrinking World
ED: Emerging Destination
LCC: Low-cost Carriers
TA: Travel Agent Transformation
EE: Experience Economy
MA: Marketing
TC: Timely Communication
ET: E-Travel
MD: Multi-destination
travel
2.5
RTO
2
1.5
Dimension 2 (31.49%)
IF
S Asia
1
MA
Oceania
TA
0.5
EE
AI
ET
IR
PO
0
IN
SH
SE
SW LCC
AO
SE Asia
0.5
PI
ED
CC
DN
HI
BT
CF
NE Asia
IM
HR
MD
TC
1
1.5
1
0.5
0
Dimension 1 (46.05%)
0.5
1
1.5
Trend 1: Travel becomes more activity-interest
based rather than destination based

More and more travellers are deciding what
activities they want to partake first and then
choose the destination that offers them
 It is therefore important for the NTOs to associate their
destinations with ‘unique’ activities/offerings to induce
inbound tourists

Other niche activities to be considered include
wellness and medical tourism
 Spa tourism
 Cruise travel is another growth market
 School children have been travelling overseas for the
purpose of education
 Volunteer tourism is another emerging trend
 Development of integrated resorts in the region is
gathering pace
Trend 2: Chasing Chinese Tourists
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Continuous economic growth in China has generated tremendous
volumes of domestic, inbound and outbound tourism activities.
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In 2005, China was expected to have 40 million outbound
travellers, an increase of 38 percent over 2004.
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World Tourism Organization (WTO) predicted that by 2013, China
will become the world’s number four tourist-generating country
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A booming economy is a result of an influx of foreign direct
investment (FDI), which leads to an increase in business travel.
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In 2005, China attracted nearly 4 million business travellers and
most of them headed to Beijing and Shanghai.
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With the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Expo on the way,
business travel to these two cities is expected to increase steadily
Trend 3: Online travel bookings and demand
for information technology keep rising
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The increase of online bookings and
improvement of information technology
will force travel agents to transform
themselves into travel consultants
Low-cost carries have helped to speed up
this transformation by fueling online
bookings
• By 2007, all airlines are required by
International Air Transport Association (ITA) to
issue e-tickets only
• Coexistence of online bookings will not replace
personal touch and services
Trend 4: Low-cost carriers – one of the King
makers of the booming tourism
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Low airfares supposedly encourage more travels
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LCCs and rising fuel prices (fuel surcharges discourage long-haul
travel) boost intra-regional (short-haul) travel
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LCCs’ expansion will shift to north and southwest of the region
from South-east Asia
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Monitor the trend of exchange rates, as they are reported to be
more sensitive to visitors than fuel surcharges when making travel
decisions
Open skies and lagging infrastructure development cause the
skies to be more crowded, especially in southern China and India
Trend 5: Asia Becomes a convention hub
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As Asia continues to be the major recipient of FDI
and increase of many multinational corporations
in the region, business travel within and to Asia
has and will continue to grow at a rapid pace
Asia will also be the most sought after location
for conventions
Corporations in mainland China begin to realise
the importance of meeting, incentive, convention
and exhibition (MICE) market, which will have
tremendous growth potential
Trend 6: Competition and cooperation become
fierce and imperative among destinations
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China and India are the two major tourists generating countries
and other destinations are endeavouring to tap these two markets
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Fierce competition also creates more cooperation
 e.g., Joint Singapore & Indonesia promotion
 Brunei twinned with Singapore
 Hong Kong is strengthening its alliance with Thailand, Malaysia
Singapore
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and
Regional consolidation results in coordinated marketing drives
 ASEAN countries are promoting their destination as a whole
 Countries of the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) are also
coordinating their joint effort in tourism infrastructure development
 India works with Sri Lanka to boost tourism in South Asia
 Middle East equally call for join promotion of the Arabian destination
Trend 7: Polarization of tourists’ tastes
and spending
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At one end are visitors seeking for
comfort/luxury travel products, at the
other are people looking for thrills/budget
travel
• Caused by the vaporization of ‘middle class’
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Majority of countries/cities in Asia are
targeting high-end and high yield markets
signifying a shift of focus from quantity to
quality
Trend 8: Consolidated social-environmental
awareness and consciousness
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One country that needs to pay special attention to this issue is
China, where economic development has and continuous to put a
heavy burden on its ecological environment
Other regions and countries also need to pay much attention to
this issue
• Hong Kong (air pollution), Indonesia (haze)
• Vietnam (overdevelopment in Camranh Bay and Halong Bay) and
Cambodia (commercialization of
Siem Reap)
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Indonesia was commended for its success in restoring coral reefs
around Pemuteran in north Bali that revived the local
communities; and Seoul’s rejuvenation of Cheong Cheon (Stream)
Possible Establishment of an international reference of quality
management and environmental management for the tourism
industry
Trend 9: Seniors and women will travel more
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The empty nesters are becoming the target market for many
countries/regions
• Japan, Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, Korea are strong drivers of
this market
• Thailand, Taiwan are both planning and building nursery villas to
attract retirees from Japan and other countries/regions
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NTOs and other stakeholders of the tourism industry need to
monitor closely the social trends of certain markets
• Japan does not encourage long-haul travel for retired couples
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Family travel is another important segment that Hong Kong,
Brunei, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Australia are
eagerly targeting
The Philippines and Singapore are targeting the middle-aged and
young professional female travelers
• The most favorable activities for women travelers are shopping,
visiting natural and scenic attractions, rest and relaxation, gourmet
cuisine sampling and visiting historic and cultural attractions
Trend 10: Safety and health concerns require
timely communication to mitigate negative
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impacts on a destination
The threat of pandemic outbreaks such as
bird flu calls for a coordinated effort
among NTOs and other government
agencies
Timely and accurate communication is
even more important that outbreak itself
Diabetes is another health concern that
will have a serious impact on tourism
• Action-oriented activities like soft adventure
tourism and sport tourism is likely to become
more popular
Thank You!
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