Martin Craigs, chief executive, PATA, speaks to Breaking Travel News at the World Travel & Tourism Council Asia Summit in Seoul, South Korea.

International visitor arrivals into Asia Pacific destinations have expanded at better than eight per cent over the first part of the year according to preliminary estimates released by the Pacific Asia Travel Association. Across the 31 destinations for which data is currently available, this translates into more than eight million additional arrivals over and above those received for the corresponding periods of last year.

Officials at the Pacific Asia Travel Association and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Hotel & Tourism Management released their joint publication, the Asia Pacific Visitor Forecasts 2013-2017. The new forecasts on the complete visitor economy will make it easier for tourism organisations to anticipate demand trends and manage supply.

Martin Craigs, chief executive of the Pacific Asia Travel Association and World Travel & Tourism Council president David Scowsill have outlined a united agenda in advocacy for the total travel industry chain. Craigs told journalists PATA as a member of the Global Travel Coalition would increasingly refer to the ‘visitor economy’ as a strategy to make politicians think more broadly of travel and tourism as a job creation and poverty alleviating industry.

Asia and the Pacific continued as a hot spot for international tourism in 2012, attracting what is expected to be in excess of 350 million international visitor arrivals, expanding its collective inbound count by more than 5% and generating more than 18 million additional foreign visits, year-on-year. This is according to preliminary results released today by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA).

Located alongside, the Digital Innovation Asia events are deliberately timed to lead into the PATA (Pacific Asia Travel Association) Annual Summit on April 25-28, which will attract around 400 of the most senior travel and tourism executives. PATA has partnered with E-Tourism Asia the producer of Digital Innovation Asia (DIA) to stage digital events, which include the Digital Innovation Asia Awards, Blogger Match-Up Asia, Speak-Up Asia, and the China Boot Camp.