Research Note: Seasonality Patterns in Asian Tourism

Abstract

Seasonality in tourism brings about difficulties for consumers, business operators and the settings in which they operate. Existing tourism seasonality literature focuses on European and North American cold climate examples, thus limiting the applicability to Asian and tropical settings. The objective of this paper is to develop a comprehensive approach to defining all types of seasonality in Asian tourism. This task is addressed by examining monthly arrivals at five key Asian destinations and the four top Chinese tourist areas. From the resulting 285 patterns of visitor movements, six types of pattern were identified in Asian tourism: the ‘rolling hills’, the ‘plain’, the ‘single-peak mountain’, the ‘multi-peak mountains’, the ‘basin’ and the ‘plateau’.