Europe’s travel market Growth despite the challenges


Brexit have so far proved misplaced. If the UK and Germany dominate outbound travel, France remains the biggest domestic market in Europe by trip nights and spending while also drawing the greatest number of international arrivals in the world. Yet for all that travel is growing, business


travel in Europe is not. The number of international business trips across the EU and number of nights away on business fell consistently from 2008 to 2015 and has yet to return to the level of 2006 (Figure 10).


Not everyone travels Industry insiders frequently make claims such as that “travel is affordable to everyone”, “overseas holidays have become essential” or “everyone books online”. None of this is true. Data from EU statistics agency Eurostat


suggests just one in four adults (25%) across the EU made an international trip in 2017. In Germany, 44% did so; in the UK 43%. In neither of these markets, two of the world’s top three, did anything like half the adult population travel abroad. In France, Europe’s third-largest economy and sixth biggest in the world, just 12% travelled beyond the country’s borders for a night. In Italy, the EU number-four and world number-eight by GDP, 17% did so. It simply is not possible to say


international travel has become ‘essential’ for all, however essential it may be for a large minority. This is a fundamental reason why demand can grow – and why demand can fall


as it did so spectacularly in the UK between 2008 and 2010 (Figure 5). A look at the proportion of the adult population not engaged in tourism, outbound or domestic, is also instructive. In the UK, 36% made no trip in 2017 – not even to visit friends or relatives overnight. In Italy, almost three in five (58%) made no trip. There is clearly inequality of travel opportunity. There are also sharp cultural differences.


Just 10% of adults in the UK expressed a clear preference for offline shopping over online in 2017 to the extent of choosing not to shop on the internet, citing reasons such as preferring to shop on the high street or buy face to face. Somewhat surprisingly this was three-points up on the previous two years – beyond the margin of error but possibly still a statistical quirk. Yet in Italy the rate was 34% and up year on year, having risen from 21% since 2009.


GERMANY and the UK are two of the world’s top-three outbound markets by departures and the top two by spending per head, with Europe’s third-biggest


market France also well ahead of the US on per-capita spending


(Figure 3). Europe’s international travellers stay overwhelmingly within Europe (Figure 4).


FIGURE 3: TOP-FIVE INTERNATIONAL SOURCE MARKETS By spending, 2017 Spending per head


DEPARTURES $bn


100 150 200 250 300


50 0


US$


1,000 1,200


200 400 600 800


0 8 | Travel Weekly Europe Report 2018 m 100


20 40 60 80


0 n/a


China US


Germany UK France


86%


*2017 Source: UNWTO


Source: Eurostat


International overnight trips (million), 2016


2% 3.8%


Travel through the ages For all the focus on Generation Z (broadly those aged 22 and under) and millennials (aged 22 to 37), older groups form the backbone of travel demand. In the EU as a whole, just 13% of trips and 12% of spending are by 15-24-year-olds, compared with 20% of trips and 21% of spending by 45-54-year- olds (Figures 12 and 13). The difference is sharper still in the UK,


where 15-24-year-olds account for 10% of outbound travellers and 9% of spending compared with 45-54-year-olds who contribute one-quarter of outbound spending.


FIGURE 4: DESTINATION REGION


OF EU OUTBOUND TRIPS All trips (leisure, business, VFR)


2.9% 5.3%


Europe (EU 77%) N America Central/S America Africa


Asia/Oceania


$258bn $135bn $89bn $71bn $41bn


$185 $415 $1,015 $960 $640


80m 91m 73m* 27m


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