<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">Tourism recovery in Asia and Pacific region has picked up speed and might rebound to the pre-pandemic level by 2024, according to a report released by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Tuesday.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Asian Economic Integration Report 2023 said international tourist arrivals in the Asia-Pacific region rose by 399 percent year-on-year for the first eight months of 2022, but only to 10.3 percent of the 2019 numbers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The variation is largely driven by differences in the pace of border reopening, public health protocols, and people's confidence in overseas travel," the report noted.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The report added that the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict also continued to pose a downside risk to Asian tourism, a potential loss of about one-third of Russia's outbound tourists.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Higher fuel prices translating to higher airfares and travel expenses, alongside weak global growth prospects, are dampening the recovery momentum," the report said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For post-pandemic recovery, the report believed that economies in the region need to look at several policy options to build sustainability and resilience while addressing pre-pandemic challenges such as narrow source markets, lack of infrastructure, and high informality.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Greater regional cooperation is needed to deal with the prolonged challenges," added the report. Xinhua/UNB</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>