Nuremberg, April 29th, 2022 – When it comes to holidays, Germans have so far been booking their trips despite the war in Ukraine and rising costs due to increasing inflation: up until the beginning of April (week 14), the number of new bookings in travel sales has been consistently above the booking level of the comparable weeks of 2019 for two months. Two years of the Corona crisis are clearly visible: Overall, the booking turnover for holiday trips in the current winter season and the upcoming summer season 2022 in March 2022 was 15 percent above the level of March 2019. With the unchanged strong demand, the current seasonal balances continue to improve – this one of the 2022 summer season has been shrinking by six percentage points to a deficit of 32 percent, the 2021/22 winter season is climbing by four percentage points to a current minus of 35 percent.
According to plans by the federal government, the Corona travel rules are to be resolved from the beginning of March and the travel warnings are being lifted for more and more holiday countries. This is clearly noticeable as a positive spirit of optimism in the holiday travel business. Travel bookings in travel agencies and on the online portals of tour operators and OTAs increased significantly in January, especially for the upcoming summer season. Two thirds of the monthly turnover was due to the travel period from May to October 2022, the largest part of which is attributable to the Whitsun holidays in June and the long summer holidays in July/August. After two years of the corona pandemic, Germans finally want to travel again - preferably to sunshine destinations, as the TDA evaluations of the booking volume in stationary and online travel sales show: In March 2022, vacation trips to the Balearic and Canary Islands accounted for 13 percent of the booking turnover as the most booked destinations, 15 percent to Turkey and 14 percent to Greece. Long-distance travel is also increasingly finding its way back to its old strength with a 14 percent share of sales. It is noticeable that more and more holiday countries are dropping their travel restrictions. By the end of March, Germans had spent a total of almost 5.1 billion euros on their summer vacations booked in travel agencies and on the travel portals of tour operators and OTAs. Compared to the pre-Corona level in 2019, this is "only" just under a third of the previous volume missing - and to date the balance sheet for the 2022 summer season has been improving from month to month.
With 71 percent of the monthly turnover, the upcoming summer vacation is clearly in the focus of Germans willing to travel. At the same time, however, an extremely strong last-minute business can also be observed: in March, almost a quarter booked a holiday at short notice with departure in March/April, especially over Easter. With short-term bookings well above the usual level, the current 2021/22 winter season can also reduce its backlog again - by a remarkable four percentage points compared to the previous month to minus 35 percent compared to the booking status at the end of March 2022. We have at least managed to make up some of the missing to catch up on vacation travel from the pandemic-ridden winter months. The 2019/20 winter season, which collapsed at the end of February with the onset of Corona, has now just been surpassed (+2 percent).
Legend:
The chart shows the cumulative travel sales generated up to the end of March 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 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 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