Far Eastern destinations have emerged as the biggest success story in the Post Office Travel Money’s Fastest Growing Currencies report. 

Booming currency demand for Thailand, Vietnam, Bali and Malaysia helped the Far East destinations fill four of the top 10 growth slots in Post Office Travel Money’s report on summer sales compared with June-August 2016.

That success is part of a bigger growth trend in the year to date, when compared with the first eight months of 2016, and gives good grounds to predict that UK visitors will be heading east for winter sun in the coming months.

The biggest surge in demand has been for the Thai baht. The annual review of summer bestsellers reports year-on-year sales growth of 69% for the Thai baht between June and August as well as a year-on-year increase of almost a third (31%) for the first eight months of 2017.

Elsewhere in the Far East there has also been a significant rise in currency demand compared with a year ago. Post Office sales of the Vietnamese dong rose 29% for June-August and 28% in 2017 to date, while the Indonesian rupiah made summer gains of 13%, which contributed to a 40% rise in 2017 to date. Demand for the Malaysian ringgit rose 7% during the summer and 18% for January-August.

However, none of the Far Eastern currencies was able to match the performance of the New Zealand dollar. Fuelled by strong demand for visits to New Zealand during the Lions summer rugby tour, NZ dollar sales rose 124% year-on-year between June and August.

Not only did this make the New Zealand dollar the Post Office Travel Money’s Fastest Growing Currency during the summer months but also for the year to date (overall sales +45%).

Andrew Brown of Post Office Travel Money, said: “While the exodus of sports fans to destinations staging big tournaments is now well established, the devotion shown by rugby enthusiasts for the Lions summer tour of New Zealand has been impressive. In June we saw a 266 per cent rise in New Zealand dollar sales, indicating that significant numbers of rugby fans were following the team down under. Interestingly, sales have remained very healthy over the past month, suggesting New Zealand will be popular with UK visitors this winter.

“Looking forward to the autumn and winter, there is every reason to expect that UK tourists will head east for long haul holidays if our summer currency sales are anything to go by. Savvy travellers know that prices in Thailand, Bali, Vietnam and Penang are cheap and in times when the value of sterling is uncertain, low resort costs are proving a big draw.”

Long haul destinations dominate the Fastest Growing Currencies summer chart, taking eight of the top 10 places.

In Europe, Croatia proved to be the year’s big winner in another record year for the destination. Post Office currency sales grew by a third to take the Croatian kuna to third place in both the summer list of Fastest Growing Currencies and in the overall table for 2017.