APAC travel trends pt. 1: Traveler behavior, growing markets and what's coming next

The Asia Pacific (APAC) travel environment isn’t just growing fast; it’s emerging as a key driver of global travel intent and spend.

According to Phocuswright’s Asia Pacific Travel Market Report 2025, the region’s travel market is expected to expand to $522.7 billion in gross bookings by 2028.

A recent report from Klook also found that APAC travelers have a 50% higher intention to increase travel spend than their European and U.S. counterparts, while research from Mabrian Technologies revealed that Asian destinations are becoming the “primary drivers of global inspirational travel intent.”

Asia also leads global demand growth, with Eastern and Southeast Asia, specifically, accounting for 31.7% of the international travel demand market share, according to Mabrian.

But while demand is growing, Gary Bowerman, Asia Pacific research analyst for Phocuswright, said that APAC travelers are also reverting back to some pre-pandemic tendencies.

“In 2025, we saw a return to seasonality, which we didn’t have in 2023 or 2024,” Bowerman said. “Everybody wanted to travel all the time, but now we’ve seen it segment back towards seasonality.”

General trends also include shorter booking windows and more independent travel, but across the region, it’s “a mixed bag,” Bowerman said.

“The Chinese market you always look at because it is the shortest booking window. In the other countries around the region, it just really, really varies,” Bowerman said.

Flexibility is also top of mind, according to Phocuswright’s upcoming report, A Market Rewired: Ten Structural Shifts Redifining Asia Pacific Travel.

"Fintech tools in APAC, such as Buy Now Pay Later and price protection products, are helping travel companies meet that expectation of flexibility while improving booking confidence," said Coney Dongre, Phocuswright research manager.

And in China, travelers also want this flexibility when booking air travel.

“Chinese consumers are showing strong interest in flexible and innovative ticket products,” said Simeon Shi, Fliggy’s chief strategy officer and head of corporate development, citing the company’s “Buy Now, Plan Later” and “Fly as You Wish” products, as well as its smart air ticket selection, which allows travelers to find a stopover where they can spend a few days before reaching their final destination.

“We’re noticing that travel plans are becoming more flexible, evidenced by travelers increasingly opting for shorter booking windows. Short trips and weekend getaways are on the rise, with more people choosing to travel outside of peak holidays and exploring less-crowded, off-the-beaten-path destinations.”

The changing traveler

Since the pandemic, Bowerman identified two strong segments in APAC: couples travel and solo travel.

“The couples market is really, really important, particularly from countries like China, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam,” Bowerman said.

And solo travel, especially among women, has become more socially acceptable.

“We’re in a region where travel is relatively new—I mean, it’s much newer compared to Europe or North America—so patterns of travel understanding up until 2019 were changing, and then you had this three-year period where people couldn’t travel, and it really did change the mindsets.

“It’s cliche, but it’s true: It really forced people to actually want to travel, to find more meaning in travel and to make sure that every moment counts when they travel,” Bowerman said.

For some, this means traveling without a partner and leveraging the freedom to utilize their income as they see fit.

“A lot of women today in Asia aren't getting married at younger ages as they used to do before, so that discretionary income that they're using to travel,” Bowerman said.

Outbound, inbound travel growth

While the travel market across broader APAC region is growing, industry players highlighted specific hotspots.

As Bowerman pointed out, Japan had a record year in 2025, attracting 42.7 million visitors. Mabrian’s research also found that Eastern Asia accounts for 16.3% of international inspiration travel demand in the first six months of 2026—and Japan is the “primary driver.”

“Japan is a winner in terms of attracting inbound tourists. It’s been growing nonstop,” said Kei Shibata, co-founder and CEO of Venture Republic and Trip101, citing the country’s cultural richness.

“I have never known anyone who actually came to visit Japan and said, ‘I don’t like Japan. I don’t want to travel back.’”

However, diplomatic tension with China is another a factor, with inbound travel to Japan expected to drop 3% to about 41.4 million in 2026 due to decreased demand from China, according to Phocuswright research.

For its part, China stands out as a burgeoning destination, driven by visa wavers, longer transmit permissions and “a repositioning of tourism as a soft-power and economic lever,” per Phocuswright.

“China has really emerged as an inbound player and is growing all the time, particularly from Southeast Asia—everybody wants to go to China at the moment,” Bowerman said, also noting that South Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam saw success in 2025.

In terms of outbound travel, Shibata pointed to India.

“India is going to be the hottest market in terms of international outbound,” he said, citing a 2023 report from McKinsey that projected India could reach China-like scale by 2040.

This is fueled by population growth and overall increased interest in travel.

“People’s appetite to travel is at an all-time high, and it’s going to continue to grow,” Shibata said.

And while Indian travelers began exploring Southeast Asia and the Middle East, they’re now also interested in longer-haul trips to North Asia, Europe and the Americas, Shibata said.

Looking ahead

Considering the pace of change post-pandemic, it’s difficult to predict exactly what the travel landscape will look like for the remainder of 2026 and beyond.

“This year, I think we’re going to come up against some challenges,” Bowerman said. “We’ve just had this surge of growth, and it will slow down—that's just inevitable.”

Economic factors will be a large factor, specifically cost of living impacting travel frequency.

“I think that’s one thing we haven’t really got back since COVID is the frequency of travel, which we used to see in 2017, 2018, 2019,” Bowerman said.

“Southeast Asia, for example, is heavily driven by low-cost carrier travel, about 52%, 53% of seats in the region are low-cost carriers. But prices are higher now than they were in 2019, and that impacts people's discretionary spend.”

Overall, shorter booking windows and higher prices are indicative of the future of travel in APAC, but there’s no crystal ball.

“A lot of the previous certainties we saw in travel planning have gone,” Bowerman said.

“Most of the economies in the region are growing. So, there is optimism that travel economies can grow with them,” Bowerman continued, adding the travel economy growth in APAC tends to mirror GDP growth, which is slower.

Even amid challenges, however, people will continue to travel.

“When they travel, how frequently they travel, their booking behaviors, their segmentation, the demographics—those are all up for debate going forward. But these regions will grow, I’m convinced of that,” Bowerman said.

This story is part 1 of a two-part series. Read part 2 here.