The Asia travel market will continue to grow despite lingering political tensions, including territorial disputes and more recently, the North Korean issue, according to Peter Yang, marketing director of the online hotel booking site Hotels.com.

“We are just at the tip of the iceberg. China recently beat Germany in terms of per person travel expenditure. We will see more and more (Asian) people traveling abroad. (From the tip of the iceberg) it’s going to slide down to the middle part. That’s where hundreds of millions of people will travel,” said Yang during an interview with The Korea Herald on Tuesday in Seoul. 

Yang, based in the Tokyo office, visited Seoul to announce the Hotel Price Index, a regular survey of hotel prices in major destinations around the world based on bookings made through Hotels.com.

“India in a few years will beat China in terms of population. Then you have Indonesia with more than 200 million people, Malaysia and Vietnam whose population is expected to reach 100 million soon,” Yang added.

According to the Hotels.com report, the Asia-Pacific region added twice as many new hotel rooms as Europe in 2012 and will account for 40 percent of the world’s new hotel construction in 2013.

Korea has seen massive hotel development in major tourist destinations such as Seoul, Busan and Jeju Island. He said the increasing hotel developments have to do with the shortage of hotel rooms in Korea, although there have been some voices of concern within the country about the sudden surge in hotel development and what they will face when the number of foreign tourists start to decline in the future.

However, Yang predicted Seoul will continue to see a massive influx of tourists from other Asian countries as people are starting to discover Korea.

“I see many demographic changes in tourists to Korea. A year ago, I saw many Japanese people here, now I see many Chinese and Southeast Asians. Korea will enjoy more inbound travelers, so I don’t see any problem of building more hotels here,” said Yang.

The hotel nightly room rates in Korea rose by 2 percent to an average of 174,284 won, ranking 28th out of 44 countries included in the HPI report. The global average hotel price increased by 3 percent last year, which Yang said was pulled down by the European financial crisis.

Yang hinted that European countries hit by the financial crisis such as Greece, Portugal and Poland may be the most affordable tourist destination in this economic downturn.

“For smart travelers looking for cheaper travel spending, these are good places to travel,” said Yang.

By Lee Woo-young  (wylee@heraldcorp.com)