TORONTO — Unemployment remains high and governments are piling up debt but worldwide there are signs that travel is roaring back from the recession.

Airlines, cruise lines, hotels and tourist boards are seeing figures that are well up on 2009 and are approaching 2008 levels.

According to the April Interim Update of the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, international tourist arrivals are estimated to have increased by 7% in the first two months of 2010. This follows the upturn already registered in the last quarter of 2009 when arrivals grew by 2% after 14 consecutive months of negative results.

International airline passenger traffic was up 10.3% in March.

“March results show that the pace of the upturn is strong. But the trauma of the recession is not over. The industry has lost two years of growth, and passenger and freight markets are still 1% below early 2008 highs. Nonetheless, the pace of improvement, based on an improving global economic situation, is much faster than anybody would have expected even six months ago,” said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s director general and CEO.

And airline revenues from business travel are nearing pre-recession 2008 figures with some carriers posting gains of more than 30%.

“The quarter’s improvement was driven largely by improving business demand,” US Airways president Scott Kirby told analysts last week, reporting corporate revenue growth of 35% percent in the first quarter.

Delta president Ed Bastian, said the carrier was close to 2007 levels and expects to be near 2008 levels by the end of the year.

Cruise lines were also seeing numbers that were better than expected.

“While the economy is still affecting our results, we are pleased to be reporting better than expected revenues and costs and we continue to see a gradual and steady improvement in the booking environment,” said Richard D. Fain, chairman and chief executive officer of Royal Caribbean International.

Carnival Corporation & plc chairman and CEO Micky Arison indicated that operating results in the first quarter 2010 were better than the company’s December guidance due to a combination of better than expected net revenue yields and lower than expected unit costs.

Commenting on the first quarter, Arison said, “we were very encouraged by our results as pricing continued to rebound off last year’s lows and we returned to top line revenue growth after a challenging 2009. During the quarter, the booking environment continued to improve for our North American brands and we achieved stronger than expected pricing on close in bookings.”