Growth in late June and early July, fuelled by the UEFA Cup and Ramadan ending two weeks earlier than last year, was offset by a consequent decline in late July and early August.
Long haul travel to Europe during the 2016 summer season has stalled - decreasing by 0.9% compared with the equivalent period last year, according to ForwardKeys, which analyses over 14 million airline booking transactions a day.
Growth in late June and early July, fuelled by the UEFA Cup and Ramadan ending two weeks earlier than last year, was offset by a consequent decline in late July and early August.
Looking ahead, the prospects of a revival are not encouraging, with bookings for the coming month currently trailing where they were at the equivalent time last year by 1.4%
The poor summer of 2016 ends a period of strong growth which has seen inbound travel growing by around 6.2% per annum for the past five years.
Olivier Jager, ForwardKeys co-founder and CEO said, “High-profile events such as UEFA’s European Cup and World Youth Day in Poland could not offset the damage caused by security concerns.
“A spate of bombings in Turkey and terrorist incidents in France have evidently deterred tourists from visiting major European countries; however, there has been a surge of interest in second tier destinations.”
Looking at the June 1 to August 31 period, long-haul travel to the UK fell by 1.3% and its poor performance was exceeded by Italy, 2.6% down, Germany, 4.1% down, France, 9.6% down and Turkey 26.7% down.
However second-tier destinations showed strong growth, with Portugal, up 5.2%: Denmark, up 5.5%; Spain, up 10.0%; Ireland, up 18.1%; Russia up 19.0% and Poland up 26.1%.
“Much of the growth was due to holidaymakers switching away from mainstream destinations and the Pope’s visit to Poland but we also saw a major influx of Chinese visitors to Russia,” Jager said.
Looking at the origin markets, both North and South America grew, by 2.5% and 4.6% respectively, but travel from the rest of the world fell – by 2.8% from Africa, by 2.4% from Asia Pacific and by 1.0% from the Middle East.
The national markets showing the greatest decline were China, down 3.7%; South Africa, down 7.7%; the UAE, down 13.0%; Brazil down 14.7% and Japan down 18.0%.