Good outlook after better December sales

Foto: C. Stelling

“We are again poised for another very good travel year,” market researcher Martin Lohmann said at the CMT travel fair in Stuttgart. Presenting the results of the annual FUR travel trends survey, he said that 55% of Germans again wanted to go on holiday this year, a stable figure compared to last year, and relatively few consumers saw financial or time barriers that would prevent them going away.

According to the FUR survey, which was conducted last November, the number of Germans expecting the economy to worsen has nearly doubled from 28% to 53% but 51% said their personal situation was unchanged, and only 26% expected it to worsen this year.

Positively for the tourism sector, 24% plan to travel more this year and 29% plan to spend more while only 16% will travel less and 18% intend to spend less. These indicators have generally been balanced between “more” and “less” in recent years. In terms of destinations, Germany will remain number one with 30% of Germans taking holidays within their own country. The other top destinations are likely to be Spain, Italy, Turkey and Austria. “We expect a slightly higher demand volume with more trips and higher spending,” Lohmann concluded.

The sunny outlook reinforced the good figures for travel agency sales in December. According to the latest monthly survey by researchers GfK, holiday bookings picked up strongly last month after a downturn in November. Travel agency sales holidays soared by 30% compared to December 2010, it found. Summer holidays were in strong demand and are now 15% higher on a cumulative basis. Winter holiday bookings increased by 20% last month, taking the cumulative growth figure to 12%.

The high growth figures were underline by similar results in the TATS survey, which focuses more on business travel agents. Agents increased their revenues by 21.6% last month, with flight sales up by 31% in revenue terms while tourism sales grew by 12%, it found.