De Villiers: “Tourism Is Back on Track”

Dawid De Villiers, assistant secretary-general of the World Tourism Organization, believes “tourism is back on track and this positive trend is likely to strengthen next year.”

“An interesting conclusion derived from the latest research study conducted by the WTO’s Expert Team,” Mr. De Velliers pointed out, “is the visible change we’re all watching right now as external factors and crisis management continue to play a less important role. There’s also a renewed interest in internal competitive factors linked to travel destinations and products, like, say, service development, staff training and promotion.”

Tourism has reaped positive outcomes through most of the ongoing year with a blistering 13 percent hike in the first four months, 23 percent in May, 12 percent in June, 10 percent in July and 6 percent in August, a month in which the number of international arrivals ratcheted up to 90 million worldwide.

The WTO notes that fear to travel has once again given way to wanderlust, and even though there’re still a few threats looming in the horizon, they are not causing such a mighty ripple effect on the travel industry as it happened three years ago.

In a region-by-region breakdown, the most spectacular spike was registered in the Asia-Pacific Rim with a stunning 37 percent, followed by North America, whose 12 percent increment stands for the first positive upshot there in the past three years.

The United States has seen a 15 percent increase in the number of foreign tourist arrivals, while its recovery as a traveler-sending market has helped Mexico’s 11 percent jump.

In Central America and South America, the amount of international trekkers that traveled there ramped up 19 and 15 percent, respectively.

The highest marks went to Guatemala (34 percent), Panama (20 percent), Nicaragua (16 percent), Argentina (11 percent), Uruguay (29 percent), Chile (17 percent), and Paraguay (15 percent).

In the case of Europe, international arrivals climbed 6 percent as Mediterranean destinations like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal held on to the same numbers posted last year. The payoff was a stronger euro that eventually sent its traditional European markets out to the Caribbean, Mexico and Brazil.

WTO experts believe positive results in Europe has also made long-haul travel from the U.S. and Japan snap back significantly.

As to Asia, China has turned out to be the strongest tourist-sending market there with 20.2 million trippers journeying abroad, up an astounding 82 percent increase until May. The top beneficiaries of this emerging travel power are Hong Kong and Macao with 58 and 36 percent increments, respectively.