Hong Kong tourist arrival snags 3rd spot in biggest regional increases

It's an impressive 11.7% growth.

According to CBRE Global Research and Consulting, the highest annual increase on tourist arrivals in Southeast Asia was recorded in Japan, followed by Thailand and Hong Kong.

Southeast Asia was the fastest growing submarket with a 10.0% y-o-y rise in arrivals, followed by South Asia (5.3%) and Oceania (4.4%).

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Japan led the pack with a large y-o-y growth of 24.0% in 2013, receiving an approximate 10.4 million visitors.

Despite all its political problems, Thailand received 26.7 million visitors in 2013, which represents a 19.6% y-o-y growth.

As a key gateway city, visitor arrivals to Hong Kong continued to increase in 2013, setting a 11.7% growth over the previous year.

Hon Kong is targeting to receive over 70 million visitors in 2017, with government plans and policies put in place to ensure adequate resources such as tourism attractions, hotel accommodation and public transport to cater to the tourism industry.

However, Hong Kong also remains vulnerable to the expected weaker growth in China outbound tourism due to changes in government policies that have raised the cost of overseas travel packages for tourists and limit the travel opportunities for government officials.