When analyzing about commercial aviation economics, trends and year over year performance it’s mandatory to highlight air traffic statistics of Asia as a whole where it’s really impressive how such a high volume of passengers are transported throughout the globe but mainly within the same continent being China a key active country on this matter. Destination marketers and countries strategists around the world promoting their destinations from abroad should thoroughly observe the opportunities arising in Asia, particularly in China.
372.5 mn travelers boarded a plane in Asia from January to May 2013, China being by far the largest contributor with the 41% of total ( 151.3 mn travelers ), followed by Japan with a 14% of total, India and Indonesia contribute with a 9 & 8% respectively, followed by some other key countries contributing with departures below 8% of continent’s total.
China’s position
Although almost all countries show high domestic air traffic ranging from 70 to 85% of their total boarded passengers, China, significantly registers a 90% of their traffic as a domestic type traffic which means that 136.6 mn passengers flew within the country in mentioned period of time on the first five months of current year.
Internationally speaking that information leads to understand the huge potential the country has for the worldwide tourism & travel industries. Lets remember that China’s inbound and outbound travel is expected to grow 2013-2017 significantly with domestic travel in particular bolstered by an increasingly prevalent and affluent middle class. Other indicators as receipts of travel, airline take-offs, number of hotels and industry value all show very positive signs of growth.
It is also expected that domestic tourism markets are being opened up to foreign investment particularly in hospitality, meaning that overseas activity in hotel ownership and management is expanding rapidly. Travel agencies are also gradually being open up to foreign involvement, which will help to increase China’s share in the international travel market.
So I have mentioned several strengths from tourism market of China, another issue not to forget remarking is that there still are some undeveloped infrastructure in certain areas which would limit the inbound growth despite of the government support and investment, this situation would boost huge opportunities to travel internationally.
When I say 10% of international travel market from China during the period herein analyzed, we are talking about 14.6 mn passengers only in five months. Please refer to the figure below to observe the distribution among continents and countries in North America and Brazil in South America. Still 73% stays within Asia. For North America, U.S.A. stands for the 78% of share with 890 thousand travelers.
Sources : National Bureau of Statistics China, GDS, MIDT bookings, BMI.
Jorge Zárate 