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Female Travelers Becoming Asia's Next Big Spenders
According to a new Asian lifestyles survey, about 40 percent of the 139 million travelers in the Asia-Pacific region nowadays are women.
It is a dramatic shift from 30 years ago, when the ratio of male to female travelers in Asia was 90 to 10 percent.
The figure is expected to further rise with women travelers catching up with male counterparts by 2011 and exceeding them in the long haul, said MasterCard International in its survey.
The report also estimates that by that year, females will fork out around US$13.4 billion in just four shopping destinations in Asia - Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok.
The report, which polled travelers in 13 markets, also indicates that 77.5 percent of women consider travel as important for their lifestyles, and 36.7 percent have taken at least one international flight for personal purposes in the past 12 months.
Meanwhile, the most important planning source for women is word of mouth from family, friends and colleagues, partly attributed to the fact that they highly emphasize personal safety.
The Internet and travel agents came in as the second and third positions.
MasterCard also finds out differing traveling and shopping patterns between Western and Asian females.
While 75 percent of females in the States love nature, adventure or cultural trips, their Asian counterparts prefer to shop and indulge in spas and resorts.
For European or American women, shopping is a secondary activity and shopping lists mainly include mementos, souvenirs and locally produced crafts.
Asian women, however, would stock up on branded goods, such as clothes, shoes, handbags, accessories, perfumes and other toiletries.
In terms of business traveling, more younger Asian females are bound for business trips as most of the them are singles aged below 30.
In contrast, female business travelers in the U.S. tend to be married women falling in the age group of 40 to 58.
22/02/2005
