Asia Pacific travel destination ranking 2016, reported by MasterCard, finds that the No.1 country with travelers to APAC was China with 50.5 million overnight travelers, which accounted for 15.7% of the total. China raised its ranking from 9th (a share of 5.8%) in 2009 to the top (a share of 9.8%) in 2012 and has kept the top since then. The annual growth rate was 25.9% since 2009.
Japan was the fifth largest country with 18 million travelers to APAC (a share of 5.8%), despite the top in 2009. In the past 8 years, the annual growth rate was 1.1%.
The most popular destination in APAC was Bangkok with 21.5 million travelers, followed by Singapore with 12.1 million travelers, Kuala Lumpur with 12 million travelers and Tokyo with 11.7 million travelers. In Thailand, Phuket (6th) and Pataya (10th) were also among the top 10.
For Chinese travelers, the top was Bangkok with 8.1 million travelers, followed by Seoul with 5.2 million travelers and Tokyo with 2.7 million travelers. In Japan, Osaka was ranked 6th with 1.9 million travelers.
With regard to local spending in APAC, China was still the top with $45.3 billion, which accounted for 18.2% of the total, followed by Korea with $21 billion, U.S. with $16.2 billion and Japan with $15.8 billion. Interestingly, Australia was ranked 7th with $11.3 billion though the country was not among the top 10 because spending a traveler was high.
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