Nuremberg, 30th December 2022 – With the booking month of November 2022, the current winter season 2022/23 can catch up strongly: The incoming sales for winter holidays are 27 percent above the previous month and also significantly above the November arrivals before the outbreak of the corona pandemic. This means that the balance of the winter season has improved by 8 percentage points compared to the previous month to a minus of 19 percent compared to the current booking status. Almost 50 percent of the monthly turnover in November is already accounted for by the booking of summer holidays in the coming year. However, the level of summer sales generated remains below the level of 2019.
In last year’s November, sharply rising corona numbers ensured that many Germans postponed the booking of their holidays for the time being. Currently, the pandemic is neither a major public issue nor a travel barrier. It is hardly surprising that holiday bookings in the past booking month are again significantly above the previous year's level. However, how much better they perform compared to the pre-corona level: The bookings for holidays during winter season are 24 percent above the sales level in November 2018 and 11 percent above November 2019 – despite the fact that in the winter season 2019/20 many of the trips had to be cancelled later in the corona course.
In November of this year, many Germans decided to give up their previous booking restraint and now book a holiday in the winter half-year. A good third of the monthly turnover – without seasonal filters – is accounted for by long-haul trips and cruises and just as much by holiday destinations in the eastern Mediterranean. Cumulatively, Turkey is showing particularly strong growth with an increase of 23 percent compared to the winter of 2018/19, but Egypt is also close to its pre-corona level (-1 percent). The Canary Islands, the favorite destination of German holidaymakers and the destination with the highest overall turnover in the winter months, also remain in high demand.
With the strong growth in bookings in November, the winter balance 2022/23 improves cumulatively by a remarkable 8 percentage points compared to the previous month. At the current booking level, however, it still lacks almost a fifth of the sales volume to catch up with the 2018/19 winter season. It does not seem impossible, but rather unlikely that this year's winter season could return to its former strength. Increasingly, the summer holidays for the coming year are now moving into the focus of German citizens.
At 48 percent, almost half of the booking turnover in November 2022 is already accounted for by summer holidays in 2023. However, both in terms of revenue and even more so in terms of sales volume, summer holiday bookings remain well below the level of 2019: revenue receipts in November are 23 percent lower, cumulatively the summer season 2023 is 35 percent behind at the current booking level in revenue. The past summer season 2022 proved that such a deficit can basically be made up – and compared to the previous year, the coming summer season 2023 has a cumulative increase in sales of 27 percent. While last summer, however, balances in the holiday budget and a great need to catch up after two corona years boosted business, now strained household incomes due to high inflation play a role. As in the current winter season, Turkey could prove to be a beneficiary with its attractive price/performance ratio. At the current booking status, no other holiday destination is in greater demand for the summer holiday 2023.
Legend:
The chart shows the cumulative travel sales generated up to the end of November 2022 for the ongoing 2022/23 winter season and the coming summer season 2023 in comparison to previous years (summer season 2019 and winter season 2018/19). For the travel seasons, TDA compares the booking status adjusted for trips that were cancelled in previous years due to corona. Both holiday travel bookings in high street travel agencies and online on the travel portals of the tour operators and online travel agencies (OTAs) with a focus on package tours are included. The chart on the left shows the percentage of sales in the booking month October that belongs to the individual travel months or seasons.
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