Chinese Travelers Made Southeast Asia Fastest-Growing Tourism Region in 2015
Photo Credit: Chinese travelers taking a selfie at Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. Skift / Dan Peltier
Skift Take
Southeast Asia owes much of its tourism growth to China but people from within the region are also generally more interested in travel than they were 10 years ago. It's a region that's social, mobile-dependent and interconnected that make it the ideal testing ground for the future of travel.
Europe and the U.S. still claim the most international visitor arrivals and the highest travel and tourism GDP -- and will for the foreseeable future -- but Southeast Asia has a big advantage over the other two regions: China.
China's 120 million outbound travelers, the world's largest outbound market, are the main tourism feeders for Southeast Asia and most Chinese outbound trips beyond Hong Kong and Macau are to Southeast Asia destinations.
Southeast Asia's travel and tourism contribution to its GDP grew faster than any other region in 2015 --7.9 percent year-over-year -- as the locus of global travel moves eastward and massive middle classes in Southeast Asia see disposable income levels rise, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council's (WTTC) 2016 economic impact report on Southeast Asia.
That region's travel and tourism GDP growth is far above Europe's and North America's, for example, with 2.5 a
