Sunday, 6 November 2011

Trends for European Tourism Revealed

The European Travel Commission (ETC) has just published its third quarterly report on European Tourism in 2011 - Trends & Prospects. This is a brief overview of the report for the third quarter of 2011.

• Signs of economic weakness have led to a revision down of  the global economic growth forecast to 2.8% in 2011 and 3.1% in 2012 (at market exchange rates).

• Risks to this forecast are skewed to the downside, coming from three different fronts: i) an escalation of the Eurozone debt crisis including financial contagion, ii) the possibility that the US falls back into recession, and iii) a hard landing in the emerging economies and China in particular. Each of these three scenarios could be sufficient to tip the world back into recession.

• The travel recovery is continuing. However, the rate of expansion is slowing with few exceptions.

• European airlines have experience robust demand growth through September. With only one exception, weekly growth rates have been above 6% and have averaged a rate of nearly 8% over this period. And seat capacity has nearly kept pace with demand, producing stable load factors.

• Through August, room demand has grown nearly 4% and been especially strong in Eastern and Southern Europe, with occupancy rates up 7.3% and 5.2%, respectively. Although occupancy growth has been relatively weak in Western Europe (2.4% YTD), room rates have performed well above average, growing 4.8%.

• By the end of 2011, international visits to Europe are expected to surpass records set in 2008.

• However, the economic landscape presents a challenging environment for travel. European inbound travel is expected to slow markedly, to 2.3% in 2012 from 5.6% in 2011. The core Eurozone countries are most exposed to the downturn and are projected to experience.

The full report can be downloaded from ETC’s corporate website under the following link: http://www.etc-corporate.org/market-intelligence/reports-and-studies.html

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