As many Asia Pacific countries have begun rolling out their vaccination programmes, the more enthusiastic ones have been drawing up plans to reopen borders to low and medium-risk countries.
To better understand what travel would look like, the folks at ADARA, a global travel data company, shared recent APAC travel trends and insights* based on their analysis of the data. This includes search trends, flight data and more.
READ MORE: we discuss the rise of revenge travel across the world
We’ve compiled some of the interesting insights, which we thought you would like to know more about.
Key APAC travel trend insights
It should come as no surprise that there is still a strong intent to travel to most countries in APAC. This insight is determined by the high search volumes, which can be most likely attributed to pent-up demand. However, this cannot be translated into bookings as new Covid-19 variants and a resurgence of local community cases in different countries has delayed the reopening of travel, airports and more.
As we’ve seen throughout the pandemic, the domestic travel market is slowly but surely gaining traction ahead of international routes among countries such as Indonesia and Australia, with growing interest in searches.
Key country travel trends
Now we go into the weeds of it all and look at specific countries. We’ve narrowed it down to Indonesia, Hong Kong and Australia.
Indonesia
Domestic travel in Indonesia has increased, and international routes in Bali have shown strong signs of growth in demand. The data shows that the volume of searches and bookings have increased by 18.8% and 27.4% respectively.
However, compared to pre-pandemic times in 2019, international and domestic travel in 2021 is still 86% and 60% behind.
Other interesting Indonesia insights to look at include:
- Indonesia has the highest pick up in searches for domestic travel in the region
- Canadian-based travellers, in particular, have shown the most interest in travelling to Indonesia, which a 178% increase in interest
Hong Kong
Despite the rising cases, Hong Kong is still seeing stable interest or in this case, a marginal decrease in terms of searches and bookings. The volume of searches was marginally down by 1.9% and bookings by 2.6% compared to the previous period, with overall booking demand is still 89% lower than 2019.
However, there is still an increase in search demand to Hong Kong from different countries:
- Canada (+52.7%)
- France (+21%)
- United Kingdom (+15.3%)
- US (+14.5%)
- Taiwan (+7.2%)
- India (+6.4%)
READ MORE: Revolut shares their travel data about travel in the ‘new normal’
Australia
Interest in international travel to Australia has picked up but has not fully translated in terms of searches to bookings. Again, this is most likely due to strict restrictions by the Australian government and surges in cases in different countries. Overall searches and bookings went down 3.6% and 5.2%.
While the increases came from all over:
- Canada (+43.8%)
- South Africa (+19.12%)
- New Zealand (+2.8%)
APAC countries showed notable increases in search demand to Australia, including:
- Taiwan (+154.88%)
- Japan (+86.1%)
- Malaysia (66.6%)
The travel trends are changing, and given the current situation in many Asian countries, intent may not translate to action. At Travel Wanderlust, we strongly suggest that our travellers listen to the authorities to ensure that they can travel safely and make sure they follow each county’s guidelines.
*Most recent 30-day analysis period: 24 May – 22 June 2021, previous 30-day analysis period: 24 Apr – 23 May 2021
