Late winter bookings boost agency sales in March

A boom in late bookings of winter holidays helped generate higher sales for German travel agents last month, according to a new survey.

Holiday sales for the winter season soared by 16.2% in March, the representative monthly survey of 1,200 travel agencies by market research organisation GfK showed. The strong demand left overall revenues for the 2008/09 winter season, which continues until the end of April and thus includes Easter, with an increase of 6.7%. This was significantly better than the 3.4% decline registered for winter 2007/08, GfK pointed out.

Summer 2009 sales also increased in March, with a 2.7% year-on-year rise. This left cumulated summer bookings (since September 2008) showing a 4% decline compared to a 3.5% rise at the same time last year. Cumulated bookings for July 2009 are now only 1.1% lower than last year’s level but August is down by 7.8%, according to the GfK figures.

Nearly 20% of holiday sales in March were for the same month or April, according to GfK. This was 2.3% more than in March 2008, reflecting the trend to late bookings. Nearly 30% of bookings were for May and June, while just over 30% were for July and August.

The GfK figures are more positive than those in the latest TATS monthly survey of 2,400 agencies. This showed holiday sales stabilising last month with a fractional decline of just 0.1%.