Truly a diverse lot
One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to travellers’ preferences in the Asia Pacific region.
YOU might have heard it said that all Asians look the same. But obviously, they don’t. Now, a study by Amadeus shows that their travel preferences differ, too.
It’s a finding that the travel technology solutions company calls the “many Asias within Asia”.
That is the underlying sentiment in Amadeus’ Journey Of Me Insights: What Asia Pacific Travellers Want, a study spanning 14 countries in the Asia Pacific (Apac) region.
Think of it as the opposite of the onesize-fits-all approach, says Amadeus Asia Pacific vice president (corporate marketing and communications) Karun Budhraja.
“No two DNAs are the same, and no two travellers are the same. Someone who travels for business will vary from one who is travelling for leisure,” he says, during an interview at the Amadeus headKuala quarters in Lumpur.
That particular analogy is amplified when you put it against the backdrop of a region as diverse as Apac.
“It’s a huge continent with very different motivations. Even between Singapore and Malaysia, which are bordering countries, there are anomalies as well,” he says.
Conducted in collaboration with market research firm YouGov, the study was conducted in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore,
South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
The sample size is 6,870 adults from the region who have travelled internationally in the last 12 months.
Contrasts in terms of behaviours, needs and preferences were registered across all geographic and demographic lines. One particular instance here is that while 66% of Chinese travellers do most of their travel bookings on mobile phones, only 39% of Malaysian travellers do so. Notable differences were also observed in the attitude towards sharing economy businesses, such as Airbnb and Uber. While 70% of Japanese travellers have never used a sharing economy service for trip accommodation, 64% of Malaysian travellers have, and almost half of all Indian travellers say they do so “often” or “very often”.
What are the factors that drive those differences?
“It’s historical. You travel every 100km within a large continent and things are bound to change – language, features, and the way of thinking too. So that historical factor brushes off in this report as well,” Karun offers.
“About 87% of Singaporean travellers want to speak their common language when they travel abroad.” The common language spoken in Singapore is English, a global language.
“For travellers from Malaysia, it is about 47% (who want to speak their mother tongue when travelling abroad).
“Compare that with Hong Kong, where Cantonese is prevalent, only 4% (of respondents who expect their language to be spoken when they travel abroad) came up. “There is that kind of disparity. I think it stems from the fact that the region is culturally rich,” he adds.
Privacy and personalisation
Another highlight in the report is travellers’ willingness to trade personal data for more relevant offers and personalised experiences. Of those polled, 64% of the respondents are comfortable giving away their personal particulars.
Malaysian travellers are slightly more cautious, with 57% of the recipients being somewhat or very open to sharing their