COMCEC Tourism Outlook-2016
9
International tourism market has become characterized by wide geographical distribution and
continuous diversification of destinations. New tourist-receiving markets have been emerging
in the developing regions of Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa and this rapid expansion of
new markets has increased the competition in the tourism sector.
While many destinations share in the overall growth, results are more mixed than usual across
destinations. According to the UNWTO, emerging economies (+4.1%) were below the advanced
economies (+5 %), with Americas (+5.9%) showing the strongest results in 2015. In 2015,
international tourist arrivals to advanced economies were 653 million, while it was 533 million
for emerging economies.
Results across emerging economy destinations were uneven in a context of lower commodity
prices and weaker economic growth. In 2015, the economic scenario remained comparatively
volatile with growth gradually picking up in advanced economies contrasting with a slowdown
in emerging ones.
According to the Figure 3.2, it can be seen that the growth of international tourist arrivals in
emerging economies is greater than advanced economies for the years 2007-2012. However,
since 2013, advanced economy destinations showed relatively faster growth in tourist arrivals
than emerging economy destinations.
Figure 3.3 Change in International Tourist Arrivals (%)
Source: World Tourism Organization, Tourism Barometer 2016 July &Tourism Highlights 2016
In terms of regions, the UNWTO stated that Americas (+5,9%) was the best performer in 2015
and the number of international tourists grew by 11 million to reach 1193 million in this region.
-6
-4
-2
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
07/06 08/09 09/08 10/09 11/10 12/11 13/12 14/13 15/14
4,5
-0,4
-4,4
5,2 4,9
3,9 4,6
5,7 5
10,4
5,2
-3,1
8,0
4,9 4,5 4,6
2,5
4,1
Advanced Economies
Emerging Economies