New booking sales skyrocket

Nuremberg, June 27, 2024 – On 3 June 2024, FTI filed for insolvency and in the same week, new booking sales skyrocketed. They are characterised by an above-average proportion of short-term package holiday bookings for the summer holidays, especially from families and a focus on holiday destinations in the eastern Mediterranean - former FTI core markets. The travel market is on the move. However, the effects of the insolvency of Europe's third-largest tour operator will only become apparent once the holiday trips that have now been booked twice have been adjusted for the cancelled FTI trips in the sales statistics.

At the end of May, shortly before FTI filed for insolvency, the holiday travel market remained robust. With incoming bookings at the previous year's level, the current 2024 summer season shows cumulative sales growth of 17 per cent compared to the previous year. Although summer growth has fallen by 3 percentage points compared to the previous month, it still documents strong demand for tour operator bookings. The shortfall in bookings compared to the 2019 summer season has been reduced to a minus of 10 per cent. The booking behaviour of German holidaymakers is comparable to the previous year - with a slight shift with a slight shift towards early bookers. The share of sales for booked winter holidays is two percentage points higher than in the same month last year. Overall, almost a quarter of monthly turnover in May is already due to holiday bookings for the upcoming 2024/25 winter season and next year's summer season.

Holidaymakers are mainly booking their summer holidays: In terms of turnover, 11 per cent of them booked last minute with departure in May and 45 per cent for the summer months of June, July and August. A further 21 percent booked for the autumn holidays in September and October. FTI sales are still fully included here. In this year's summer business, holiday destinations on the eastern medium-haul routes are showing above-average growth. At the current booking level, Turkey and Egypt alone account for a good 30 per cent of all summer sales booked by tour operators to date - an increase of 28 per cent on the previous year. FTI was also strongly represented in both holiday destinations. "It is clear that FTI's withdrawal from the market will leave a visible mark on the German travel market. The question is rather how quickly the capacities can be redistributed to other tour operators - and how quickly family households in particular with limited holiday budgets will receive their refunds. Not everyone will be able or willing to make a replacement booking in a timely manner, despite the great concessions made by many tour operators in terms of waiving advance payments or extended cancellation conditions," sums up Alexandra Weigand, Director Sales & Consulting at Travel Data + Analytics.

At TDA, the turnover statistics will be adjusted for the previous FTI bookings with the next monthly evaluation at the end of June 2024.

Legend:

The chart shows the cumulative travel sales generated up to the end of Mai 2024 for the current winter season 2023/24 and the upcoming summer season 2024 in comparison to the previous seasons and the pre-corona level (summer 2019, winter 2018/19). TDA's analyses include both holiday bookings in traditional travel agencies and online on the travel portals of tour operators and online travel agencies (OTAs) with a focus on package holidays. The chart on the left shows the percentage of sales in the booking month of April accounted for by the individual travel months and seasons.