A new major industry study by Oxford Economics suggests that the Asian travel industry will enjoy a decade of sustained growth lying ahead for Asia’s travel industry with visitor flows for Asia reaching an average annual growth rate of 15.1 per cent.

Globally the report sees a pretty robust rise of at least 5.4 per cent annually for the next 10 years. This means the travel industry’s fortunes will outstrip projected global GDP growth. This is good news for the tourism industry but the real story here is Asia.

The report predicts that Asian travel expenditures greatly surpass the current top spender Europe by 2023. Growing at 18 per cent per year, the Asian outbound travel spend will reach US$752.8 billion to make up 40 per cent of global expenditures.

Meanwhile, Asia will drive 55 per cent of global business travel growth in the next 10 years. North-east Asia alone will contribute 42 per cent of this, while South-east Asia makes up the remaining 13 per cent.

Emerging economies are also set to spearhead air travel growth, said the study. Countries such as India, Indonesia and Russia will overtake the OECD bloc as the biggest sources of global air traffic.

And of course China’s prominence cannot be ignored either, with the country to drive as much as 20 per cent of global outbound travel in the years ahead. This report and others have also predicted that China will overtake the US as the world’s largest travel market by end 2014.

The pool of potential outbound travellers will more than double by 2013 and China is on track to become the world’s largest domestic travel market by 2017 as its GDP, employment level and consumer spending shoots up.

“The findings underscore what most of us already intuitively know – that we have now truly arrived in the Asian Century. No matter where we look, Asian travellers have and will continue to change the landscape of travel, and businesses must adapt to them or risk falling behind,” said Angel Gallego, president, Amadeus Asia Pacific who commissioned the study.