Asia’s affluent middle class is ready to extend almost fivefold over a better two decades, presenting significant opportunities for Australian tourism, in keeping with a brand new report released by Tourism Australia and the sector Tourism Organization (UNWTO) at this year’s Australian Tourism Exchange (ATE).
‘Key Outbound Tourism Markets in South-East Asia’ provides up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of the foremost tourism trends and developments in five key South-East Asian outbound markets: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Tourism Australia Managing Director Andrew McEvoy said the study would help the Australian tourism industry to raised understand, communicate with, and serve these five, key emerging outbound markets.
“The crucial factor behind the expansion of travel out of the Asian markets – from South-East Asia up to from China – is the increasing middle class population of these source countries due to the their growing economic prosperity.
“Each market is different, but all of them possess significant potential, which we have to understand to truly profit from this Asian Century,” Mr McEvoy said.
UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai said around 30 per cent of the world’s middle class population is now in Asia and this figure is predicted to extend almost fivefold over a better two decades, to three.4 billion or 60% of the world’s total.
“UNWTO is extremely pleased to have partnered with Tourism Australia in producing this report that sheds new light at the travel trends of those countries,” said Mr Rifai.
The new report provides detailed profiles of every market in response to extensive research, including analysis in their future potential.
In 2012, these five countries accounted for US$ 47 billion in international tourism expenditure, up from US$ 25 billion in 2006.
Mr McEvoy said that every of the five countries had its own unique characteristics but that all of them had the possible to be significant future source markets for Australian tourism within the coming years.
“Indonesia stands proud end result of the size of the rustic and its population. Whilst it has far to visit realise its potential, Indonesia is making rapid progress and is amazingly much on our radar,” he said.
“Singapore is notable for its wealth and is by far the most important of the five markets in relation to spending. It’s also a more mature market, the single country on this study where outbound travel – long-haul and short-haul – is already a reality for almost all of residents.
“Malaysia is analogous to Singapore when it comes to the present levels of outbound travel, but these days those trips are predominantly short-haul, often an analogous day. The spending power of Malaysians shouldn’t be as high as Singaporeans, but higher than in Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam, so there’s good potential here too.
“Thailand has arguably been hampered nowadays by political upheavals and environmental catastrophes, equivalent to recent flooding, but nevertheless still presents sizeable opportunities for economic and outbound tourism growth.
“Vietnam has a wide population, but average incomes are still very low. On the subject of current spend and visitation, is by far the smallest of the five markets right this moment, but in addition the fastest growing,” Mr McEvoy said.