Amadeus study: Asia, the crossroads of business travel

Could it be that all the roads of business travel lead to Asia? Possibly... The fact remains that the dynamism of the Asian aviation market continues unabated. Figures published on 9 May by Amadeus confirm the trend: "Asia is at the forefront of global travel growth", summarises the study, which adds: "Of the ten busiest air routes in the world, seven are domestic routes in Asian countries, including three in Japan. In terms of volume, the busiest route is the one between Jeju and Seoul (almost 10 million passengers), followed by the Rio de Janeiro / São Paulo route (around 8 million passengers)". The countries of the BRIC group are logically present in the ranking of the ten busiest routes with the highest growth rates, with three notable guests in this list: Indonesia (+11% to 53,701,000 passengers in 2011), the Philippines (+15% to 24,392,000 passengers) and Chile (+21% to 9,306,000 passengers).

The study published by GDS, based on the market intelligence solution Amadeus Total Demand, also highlights the main routes used by travellers, and their annual evolution. The report shows that "traffic between Asia and Europe on the one hand, and between Asia and North America on the other, increased by 9%. Traffic between Asia and the Middle East rose by 6%, reaching 38 million passengers over the year as a whole". The only downside to this widespread growth was the slight decline in the Africa-Europe route in 2011 (-2%).

The world's busiest intercity air routes (Source: Amadeus)