As Asia’s tourism market starts to recover after the end of the COVID pandemic, Hilton's Asia-Pacific president Alan Watts is noticing a change in the guests checking into his hotels across the region—they’re increasingly not from very far away. And they’re frequent visitors: For example, some of Asia's leisure travelers are heading to the Indonesian island resort of Bali three times a year.
“I’ll give you the hard stats. 10 years ago, inter-Asia travel only made up four out of 10 arrivals. The other six were coming from long-haul markets,” Watts says. “Now, [inter-Asian travelers are] eight out of every 10 arrivals that walk through the door.”
