Nuremberg, July 29, 2022 – The strong demand for vacations in the German market continues in June 2022: Booking sales generated in travel agencies and on online travel agencies has exceeded the previous year's month by 14 percent, knowing that June'19 was also an extraordinary strong booking month. The current months remain very significantly above the booking level of 2019 (+54 percent). This improves the cumulative balance of the 2022 summer season to a shortfall of 7 percent (previous month: -13 percent). However, the booking curve has flattened during June and has crossed 2019 pre-Corona levels by the 27th calendar week in early July.
In June 2022, booking volumes in travel agencies and on online travel agencies concentrated on short-term vacations in the summer months: 57 percent of monthly sales relate to vacations departing in June, July and August. As of the current booking status at the end of June 2022, August was the first travel month of this year's summer season to exceed the pre-pandemic level in sales (+2 percent). The travel month of May still ended with a minus in the amount of 10 percent, June with minus 8 percent. July, which can still hope for last-minute bookings, currently stands at minus 6 percent. In the course of the summer, therefore, the shortfalls have increasingly melted away. The fall holiday in October are also already relatively well booked. As a travel month, October now only has a relatively small backlog of 5 percent.
German holidaymakers prefer the Mediterranean coast in this summer during the pandemic, when travel is once again relatively carefree. Taken together, the eastern and western regions have exceeded their pre-corona levels in terms of vacation travel sales (+7 percent). After Greece, Turkey and Egypt, the Balearic Islands have now also returned to growth (+3 percent), with the Canary Islands close behind (-1 percent). The six travel countries with the highest turnover - Spain, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Italy and Portugal - stand for 77 percent of the vacation travel turnover achieved so far in the summer for tour operator travel (excluding cruises) at the current booking level. Together with the long-haul destinations Dominican Republic, Maldives and Mauritius, which are in high demand, the growth of a few Mediterranean destinations is large enough to almost offset the declines in other destinations, some of which are still in the high double digits. Total tour operator travel (excluding cruises) is only 3 percent away from its 2019 revenue level for the 2022 summer season.
Legend:
The chart shows the cumulative travel sales generated up to the end of June 2022 for the 2022 summer season and the 2021/22 winter season in comparison to previous years (2019 and 2021 summer and 2018/19 and 2020/21 winter seasons). 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 stationary 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 March that is attributable 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