Halal Tourism Industry Recovering In Asia-Pacific

The halal tourism industry is slowly recovering from the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia-Pacific.

According to STR, a division of CoStar Group that provides market data on the hotel industry worldwide, the Asia-Pacific hotel industry has reported continued performance improvement from the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to strong domestic demand and holiday packages in various Asian countries. The uptrend in the industry continues to hold in the coming months as the holiday-goers are bracing for the upcoming vacations at the end of December.

Halal Tourism Industry Recovering In Asia-Pacific

“Unlike the declines we’ve seen in the U.S. after Labor Day or Europe after the summer holidays, Asia-Pacific markets have continued seeing tourism growth,” said Jesper Palmqvist, STR’s Area Director – APAC. “For instance, in September, 70% or better occupancy levels were registered in key China markets such as Sanya, Shenzhen, Chengdu, and Xian. What is more noteworthy is that these markets are showing year-over-year growth in the metric, which is not common for most of the world right now due to the problems associated with the COVID-10 pandemic”.

China’s demand has grown consistently over the months due to strong domestic demand and national holidays. On Oct 3, during the extended Golden Week period as National Day coincided with the mid-autumn festival (Oct 1-8), the market posted an 83% occupancy in hotels, almost reaching levels seen in 2019 at the same time period.

In Japan, during Silver Week (Sept 19-22), the hotel occupancy boost was driven mainly by domestic demand. The market posted its highest occupancy level on Sept 23 (67%). Similar to other markets around the globe, regional and leisure markets like Hokkaido and Okinawa have begun to see more substantial occupancy growth, while Tokyo and Osaka are starting to see gentle initial growth.

While both Australia and New Zealand also continue to improve, New Zealand occupancy is just 25% behind 2019 levels. Restaurants, as well as tourist spots, are almost full during weekends in many countries in the region.

Other regional players like Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore are showing encouraging signs in the number of visitors,

Every country has been trying to contain the second wave of the novel coronavirus in one way or the other, the stakeholders in the tourism sectors of these countries seem to be upbeat about the upward trends. Most of these countries have been able to contain the further spread of the deadly virus after stumbling initially.  They are hoping for a significant improvement in the situation in the coming months as the deadly virus does not seem to be as lethal as it was considered a few months. and taking actions to revive their economies by giving incentives to their tourism sectors in