Nuremberg, January 31, 2022 - In December 2021, the sales volume in the leisure travel business has been relatively stable: However, the overall volume shows a 45 percent loss comparing to the sales in December 2019. Cumulatively, the current 2021/22 winter season and the coming summer season 2022 keep on the level of the previous month. With the first days of the new year, leisure travel bookings are clearly picking up speed: The new sales volume has achieved in the first two weeks of January 2022 already significantly a higher level than those of December as a whole. The traditional January peak is returning this year - even if sales have not yet reached the pre-corona level again.
The cumulative season balances for the booking status at the end of December 2021: The winter season 2021/22 shows a deficit of 46 percent compared to the winter season 2018/19, which was still completely unaffected by Corona. The 2019/20 season was already marked by massive losses in spring 2020 at the beginning of the corona pandemic, which is why it is no longer suitable as a benchmark. In the past booking month of December, 43 percent of the turnover was still attributable to the winter travel months up to April 2022. Suffering rising incidences and increasing travel warnings, an astonishingly high proportion of Germans is still willing to travel.
This year's summer holiday is increasingly becoming the focus of German citizens. In December 2021, summer holidays accounted for 52 percent of the booking turnover and by mid-January 2022 had already climbed to 64 percent of the turnover. Cumulatively, summer trips booked in travel agencies and on the travel portals of tour operators and OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) only account for half of the pre-corona sales in 2019. Overall, sales in December were too weak to improve. The summer of 2021 will be visibly exceeded, because hardly any holiday trips were booked during the lockdown at the beginning of last year.
The number of bookings in the first weeks of January this year is more than a ray of sunlight: the typical, marked increase in bookings in January is returning. In the first three weeks, booked holiday travel sales have not yet reached the level of January 2020 (only two thirds of them), but they are increasing from week to week. The trend is on the right direction.
Legend:
The chart shows the cumulative travel sales generated up to the end of December 2021 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 canceled 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 December 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