Asian luxury travel sector booming: ALTM
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Asia has emerged as a luxury travel powerhouse as consumer confidence increases and the spending power of the Asian elite reaches new heights. This finding is based on a new initiative that was launched by Asia Luxury Travel Market (altm) at this year’s event staged last month in Shanghai. The results of a unique ALTM trends survey conducted in Q1, 2010 were announced at the pre-show conference. Through highly targeted regional and global luxury planner and supplier databases, the survey sought to help clarify how businesses may have changed during the fluctuation in economic conditions and how they have bounced back in recent months.The survey highlighted preferred destinations, frequency of travel, annual spending, domestic versus international and the buyer/supplier relationship. It also showed the affect of the last year on the choices of high net worth individuals (their clients) when planning their leisure time, how the industry might react to potential influences of change, whether “luxury travel brands” are well placed to entice the region’s wealthy and what these trends could reveal about the habits of this elite group of travellers in the future.The results of this survey show how the vast majority of luxury travel professionals throughout the region have already seen an increase in business in 2010 and almost all of them expect a significant increase in the luxury travel market in Asia. Luxury travel buyers and agents have seen considerable improvements in their business this year, with 94% of them expecting an increase in luxury travel within the Asia Pacific region, particularly to China, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia.Luxury travel operators and suppliers have also seen considerable improvements this year, with 60% experiencing an increase in luxury bookings in Q1 of this year. Furthermore, 88% expect the Asia Pacific luxury travel market to grow significantly within the next 12 months.Travel trends seem to be changing as well, with travellers putting more emphasis on unique destinations and bespoke experience and the majority of operators growing and changing their offerings to cater to this need.
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