Early 2010 shows increase in international tourism
The April interim update of the World Tourism Organization demonstrates a trend of growth in international tourism. The update comes from the UNTWO World Tourism Barometer who predict this momentum will continue through 2010, resulting in an overall growth of between 3% and 4%.
The results show that growth was positive in all World regions in the first two months of 2010. The greatest expansion came in the Asian Pacific and Africa with 10% and 7%, respectively. The average growth for all regions was 7% and this comes on top of a positive last quarter in 2009 when arrivals were up 2%, following 14 months of steady decline.
Europe and the America's both only registered growths of 3%. However, these were the two regions hit hardest in the recession and any positive sign will be welcomed.
The UNTWO have also said that they don't anticipate a need to re-evaluate their annual prediction based on the disruption to air travel caused by the volcanic ash cloud over Europe. The airspace closure is expected to have an affect of only 0.5% on European annual arrivals and 0.3% on the total Global count.
There was a warning that this positive news should be held in context. 2009 was a particularly weak period and the first two months of 2010 are still 2% below 2008 levels.
Source: World Tourism Organization
