International arrivals to North America surged by 11% in March 2012. This very strong result was supported by the continued growth of arrivals to Canada (+9%) and the USA (+14%). Besides the strong performance of intra-regional travel flows, arrivals from Germany and the UK showed outstanding gains of approximately 30% during March 2012 after several years of sluggish growth. In addition, arrivals from Japan set new monthly arrivals records to the USA and Mexico. Northeast Asia continued with its positive momentum during the third month of 2012. This upward shift can be attributed to the recovery of international arrivals to Japan (+92%) a year after the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. The rebound of Japan has been substantial to date and its international arrivals were only 4% lower than those of March 2010. The easing of restrictions on solo travel from Mainland China to Chinese Taipei has significantly increased traffic to the latter destination, which saw 250,000 arrivals from the mainland in March 2012, an increase of 65%. Foreign inbound into Korea ROK also saw a dramatic increase for the month (+17%). China reported growth of 1.4% for total inbound crossings. However, the foreign arrivals count increased at the much stronger rate of 7.5%. South Asia was the second fastest growing market reporting 14% year-on-year growth during March this year although in terms of visitor volume, it was still far behind other Asia/Pacific sub-regions (860,000 arrivals for the month). With the exception of the Maldives (which reported a 5% decline), all reporting destinations within this sub-region performed well with gains in foreign arrivals of more than 10% for the month. Nepal and Sri Lanka in particular were very strong performers during March 2012, with gains of 37% and 21% respectively.