Nuremberg, 30 July 2021 – Overall, the booking month of June 2021 is still characterised by extremely buoyant holiday demand. Cumulative summer sales of tour operator holidays organised on a package or modular basis have now more than doubled compared to the previous year's summer 2020. Losses to pre-Corona summer 2019 have continued to narrow to minus 65 per cent (previous month: -75 per cent). Since the end of June, however, the booking momentum has visibly weakened: in the first two weeks of July, weekly bookings no longer reach the level of the comparable weeks in 2019. The spread of the delta variant of the Corona virus is causing holiday business to Spain and Portugal in particular to slump.
The classification of a destination as a risk area with a particularly high risk of infection (high incidence area) can be seen almost immediately in the number of new bookings by German citizens: In the 28th calendar week, holiday bookings to the Western Mediterranean region, which is dominated by Spain, have already fallen to a 22 percent share of sales - from up to around 40 percent in individual weeks. The actual extent of the decline - including the now also increasing cancellations - will only be revealed in the July figures. One thing is certain, however: the classification of Spain, including the Balearic and Canary Islands, as a high incidence area is a bitter setback for the travel industry. To date, Spain has accounted for 29 per cent of the summer season turnover of tour operators (excluding cruises).
The booking month of June 2021 at least provided a small lead with strong increases: incoming bookings exceeded the pre-Corona level in June 2019 by a remarkable 42 per cent. Short-term holidays for the summer holidays in July and August were in particular demand, which together with last-minute bookings account for a 63 per cent share of sales. Cumulatively, i.e. booked up to and including June, the current 2021 summer season has already more than doubled the previous year's sales. However, it does not even begin to stand up to a comparison with the pre-Corona summer of 2019: since the normally so strong early-booking sales are missing, the summer of 2021 is still 65 percent behind the summer of 2019. Nevertheless, the balance has improved by ten percentage points compared to the previous month of May.
Compared to the previous month of May, holiday bookings for Greece and Turkey in particular increased strongly in June, as did bookings for Bulgaria at a lower sales level. There is also a noticeable increase in demand for destinations that are mainly reached by car. In particular, holidays to Italy and holidays within Germany more than doubled in terms of tour operator bookings compared to the previous month.
Legend:
The chart shows the cumulative travel revenues generated until the end of June 2021 for the 2021 summer season in comparison with the previous year and the previous year. Both holiday travel bookings in stationary travel agencies and online on the travel portals of tour operators and online travel agencies (OTAs) with a focus on package tours are included. The chart on the left shows the percentage of turnover in the booking month of May accounted for by the individual travel months and seasons.
Note: Since the booking month of March 2021, Travel Data + Analytics has also used 2019 as a pre-Corona comparison, as bookings collapsed from mid-February 2020 and hardly any travel took place in the first lockdown.
About TDA Travel Intelligence
Travel Data + Analytics (TDA) took over in spring 2019 the travel sales panel run by the Nuremberg market research company GfK since 2004. After the GfK data had been migrated to a new IT landscape, Travel Intelligence was set up as an independent solution with a self-learning database and associated analysis tool. The basis remains the booking data from stationary travel agencies and online portals that sell tour operator products. The requirements of tourism companies on a modern control instrument and evolving, increasingly dynamic questions can thus be mapped reliably and promptly, without giving up the core of a market-representative method that is consistently comparable over time. TDA = Current booking situation + individual product performance + new market opportunities.
Further information: Alexandra Weigand, alexandra.weigand@traveldataanalytics.de, phone: +49 (0)911 951 510 03