Europe’s travel market Growth despite the challenges
W
hy produce a report on the European travel market? Asia- Pacific is the fastest-growing region of the travel world and
we know China will shape the future. Well, Europe is 48% of the global source
market for international travel, almost double the size of Asia-Pacific, and receives 51% of the world’s international arrivals. If Europe’s international tourism receipts
(38% of the global total) don’t match the proportion of visitors the region draws, it is because so many European travellers (86%) remain in Europe and therefore take shorter trips, spending less than those on longer trips to far-flung regions. The Americas (24%) and Asia-Pacific
(29%) attract a relatively higher proportion of spending because when Europeans do travel beyond Europe they stay longer. The world’s top-five international
source markets by expenditure – China, the US, Germany, the UK and France – are unchanged on a year ago. But spending per head in Germany and France has risen year on year and that in the UK has fallen only slightly despite the lower exchange rate of the pound against the dollar. The difference in spending per head is striking. Europe’s two biggest markets, Germany and the UK, recorded per-capita spending on international travel in 2017 at roughly two-and-a-half-times that of the US and five times that of China.
TRAVEL & TOURISM SOURCE FIGURE 1:
MARKETS BY REGION, 2017 % of global market
14% 3%
17% 48% 25% 86% 3%4%
Europe Asia-Pacific Americas Middle East Africa
Other/unspecified
Within region Beyond region
Source: UNWTO
Germany remains the world’s biggest outbound market by trips (note all figures in this report are for overnight travel). Within the EU, Germany accounted for
33% of outbound trips in 2017 and the UK 26%. Together with France, these markets account for two-thirds of Europe’s outbound travel. Germany and the UK’s pre-eminence are clearer still from a comparison of outbound nights per head, with the UK topping the rankings among major markets at 11.3 and Germany on 9.3. And these markets, mature as they
European remains an enormously fertile region for travel. Ian Taylor reports
may be, are growing. German outbound travel numbers passed 90 million in 2016, up from 84 million in 2015, and receipts from outbound travel spending hit a record €77 billion. Numbers travelling from Germany will hit a new record this year, with analyst GfK reporting outbound bookings for summer 2018 up 12% year on year to the end of August. The UK also recorded record numbers of outbound travellers in 2017, 73 million – up from 55 million in 2010 at the lowest point of the downturn following the 2008 financial crash and recession. The record figures came despite uncertainty around Britain’s exit from the EU and the sharp fall in the value of the pound from mid-2016. The UK market may yet turn, but GfK
EUROPE is the source of almost half the world’s international
travellers (Figure 1) and draws more than half the world’s international arrivals, taking almost two-fifths of global receipts (Figure 2).
figures for summer 2018 bookings to the end of August showed passenger numbers up 5% year on year and revenue up 9%. All forecasts of decline in demand as a consequence of
INTERNATIONAL
ARRIVALS: 2017 % of global market
4% 5% 16% 1.323bn 24% 51% 24%
$1.332tn 29%
FIGURE 2: INTERNATIONAL TOURISM
RECEIPTS: 2017 % of global market
5% 4% 38%
Europe Asia-Pacific Americas Middle East Africa
Source: UNWTO
Travel Weekly Europe Report 2018 | 7
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
