The UK and Germany will remain the most important European markets for Asia Pacific destinations this year, despite the rise of Russia.

This is according to PATA’s Asia Pacific Visitor Forecast, which predicts that the number of European visitors to Asia Pacific will increase 3.5% this year, to 67.7 million arrivals. It is worth noting however, that PATA includes the Americas within its definition of Asia Pacific.

In 2017, the UK is expected to be the largest European source market for Asia Pacific, with a total of 14.9m visitors. Germany will be second with 11.3m and France third with 7.1m.

But Russia is expected to experience the largest increase, in terms of actual visitor numbers. An additional 373,000 Russian arrivals into Asia Pacific this year will take the country’s total to almost five million.