Europe sees long-haul counter to falling home source arrivals
EUROPE is seeing good growth from long-haul arrivals, helping balance the decrease of intra-European arrivals, according to the latest European Cities Marketing ‘Air Travellers’ Traffic Barometer’.
Forward bookings for Q3 2018 are following the same trend.
Long haul arrivals increased by 8.4 per cent in Q2 2018 compared to Q2 2017, an increase of 8.4 per cent, with Asia and Oceania, Africa, and Central and South America maintaining healthy growth rates above 10 per cent. However, intra-European travel showed poor performance, falling 4.1 per cent. This resulted in a moderate growth of 1.5 per cent in total international arrivals in Europe during Q2.
More leisure travel
The traveller profile for long-haul arrivals maintained its growing leisure-related behaviour. This was indicated by segments typically associated with leisure travel grew most, namely families of three-to-five passengers and six-or-more passenger groups, with medium lengths of stays (six to 21 nights), and longer lead times of more than 120 days.
Top destinations
Most long haul travellers are still attracted by London (17 per cent share) and Paris (14 per cent). Rome was the top growing destination in terms of share (nine per cent), increasing by two percentage points from last quarter, while Istanbul decreased by three points (six per cent) during the second quarter. The top 10 list welcomed Zurich for the first time this year.
Compared to the Q1 2018 barometer, the growth for Istanbul has slowed. Although it is still the leader in terms of the increase in visitor arrivals (+37.2 per cent), Istanbul is followed closely by Tallinn (+30.3 per cent) and Dubrovnik (+27.9 per cent) for Q2 2018.
New cities to this list, when compared to last quarter, include the Swiss destinations Zurich (+11.2 per cent) and Geneva. The latter, with a positive 20.5 per cent variation, made it to fourth place in the top 10. The recent depreciation of the Swiss Franc, making Switzerland a more affordable destination, may have encouraged this growth.
Forward bookings
Although bookings for intra-European show a decline of 5.1 per cent, long-haul arrivals, ahead by 8.3 per cent are still making up for this and total international arrivals are ahead by 1.7 per cent.
London (18 per cent) and Paris (13 per cent) are still the preferred destinations, followed by Rome (10 per cent), together representing more than a third of arrivals in Europe.
Istanbul (+31.1 per cent), Tallinn (+34.4 per cent) and Dubrovnik (+24.1 per cent) continue their reign as the top three growing European destinations for Q3.
