Nuremberg, May 31, 2024 –As already expected by booking activities of the last months, the 2023/24 winter season, which ended with the booking month of April 2024, ended with double-digit sales growth compared to both the previous year and the pre-corona level. Following last year's summer season, a winter season has now also returned to positive sales figures for the first time after the Pandemic. For the new 2024 summer season, 72% of the previous year's sales have already been booked at the official start of the season with holiday trips from May. Thanks to good early bookings, sales are currently up 20 per cent on the previous year. In addition, a good fifth of the monthly turnover generated in travel sales in April is already attributable to the upcoming 2024/25 winter season and later holiday trips.
Well done! The 2023/24 winter season ends with a pleasing result. In terms of turnover, it achieved growth of 20 per cent compared to the previous year. In terms of people booked, 19 percent more guests travelled with an organized tour operator than in the previous winter season. Compared to the pre-corona level, the 16% increase in turnover was offset by 7% fewer booked travellers. Although the shortfall in guest numbers for organized tour operator trips has visibly decreased over time, it was ultimately not quite enough to achieve parity.
In the 2023/24 winter season that has just ended, long-haul travel accounted for just under 25 per cent of total sales generated in travel sales, although this is not quite back to previous levels. Compared to the 2018/19 winter season - before the coronavirus pandemic put a stranglehold on the travel industry - sales are still down 2 per cent. Germans are taking the lion's share of their winter holidays in the warmer south on medium-haul routes with a flight time of three to five hours, preferably to the Canary Islands and the Red Sea. Package holidays, which are relatively easy to book, continue to generate the strongest growth for online sales by tour operators and traditional online travel agencies (OTAs), with sales up 26 per cent on the previous year and traditional travel agency sales up 18 per cent. Two thirds of total holiday sales in winter 2023/24 were booked through travel agencies. In the pre-coronavirus winter of 2018/19, this figure was 78 per cent, a whopping 12 percentage points higher.
In April 2024, almost 17% of monthly sales were attributable to holiday trips booked at short notice over Whitsun in May. No other travel month generated more sales. Overall, 73 per cent of total sales in the booking month of April will go to the 2024 summer season with the travel months from May to October - with a 14 per cent increase compared to the same month last year. In contrast, average travel spend is only growing by 4 per cent - so there is more demand than price increases behind the growth. ‘A good short-term volume, pleasing sales growth and the fact that wages and salaries have risen significantly should have eased the financial situation of many households: All of this justifies the hope that this year's summer season will continue to develop well,’ summarises Roland Gaßner, Director Business Development at Travel Data + Analytics. The early bookings also give cause for optimism: a good fifth of monthly sales in April are already attributable to the next tourism year - three quarters of this to the 2024/25 winter season and a quarter to next year's summer season.
Legend:
The chart shows the cumulative travel sales generated up to the end of April 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.
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
