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THE biggest source market for tourism in the Asia-Pacific is China, whose visitors are expected to take up 15.7 percent of the market, which will translate to approximately 50.4 million visitors in 2016.

The index also showed that Chinese tourists will throng Bangkok in 2016, with an expected 8.2 million visitors to enter the city this year. Seoul, Tokyo, Pattaya, Singapore and Bali are also preferred destinations for the Chinese.

Chinese travelers are predicted to spend up to US$45.3 billion in Asia-Pacific alone. Pic: bigbirdz/flickr

Matthew Driver, MasterCard’s executive vice president of global products and solutions for Asia Pacific, said, “Where you might have found tourists from Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and the United States, you are now much more likely to come across travelers from mainland China”.

In second place on the source market index is South Korea, which takes up about 10 percent of the pie, translating to approximately 32 million outbound visitors in 2016.

Taiwan, the US, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the UK and Thailand make up the rest of the top ten. The northeast Asian markets of China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan will contribute about 38 percent of total international overnight arrivals.

The study ranked 167 destinations across 22 countries in terms of international overnight arrivals, cross-border spending, and total number of nights spent at each destination.

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Source: travelwireasia.com