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French, Japanese and Chinese say taxes are putting a brake on breaks

The French, Japanese and Chinese lead the way in claiming that airfare taxes make the cost of travel too expensive.

In a study carried out by Visa International Asia Pacific and the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) 58 per cent of French, 55 per cent of Japanese and 53 per cent of Chinese all said taxes were too costly.

Sweden (34 per cent) and Australia (37 per cent) were the least likely to agree.
The study, which investigated the attitudes of potential travellers to Asia from 10 key markets, revealed an increasing willingness to visit Asia compared with a similar survey a year ago.

However, it highlighted a number of concerns that are holding back the growth in the Asian tourism market.

These included:

• Fifty-eight per cent said that the potential for terrorism made them less likely to travel.

• Fifty-eight per cent also said that negative media reports made them less likely to travel

• Sixty-nine per cent said that travel advisory warnings made them less likely to travel.

The study also uncovered that potential travellers need urgent access to accurate information. While tsunamis were not seen as a considerable barrier to travel (35 per cent said they were less likely to visit Asia because of the tsunami), those who did cite it as a concern were frequently misinformed. Nearly 16 months after the December 2004 tsunami, a significant number of potential Asian travellers said that several destinations (including China, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Philippines and Singapore — markets unaffected by the 2004 tsunami) were “still severely or somewhat affected” by the tsunami.

According to the study, bird flu has emerged as a hurdle to travel in Asia, with about one-third of respondents claiming they did not know which areas have been affected, and more than one in five believing that areas with no reported cases had been affected.

Ignorance, said the survey, was proving to be an unnecessary inhibitor to travel.

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