Europe’s Travel Hot Spots: Spain, Italy & Greece, with Turkey close behind

Travelers have a shown a growing interest in traveling to Europe, and flight searches in recent weeks have confirmed the trend; however, the growth rate has slowed compared to the previous month. The trend was identified by an analysis of data from the first international metasearch of flights; the analysis of flight search data makes it possible to study trends in tourist demand, the travel preferences of travellers and identify which regions have the highest travel demand.

The number of flights searched in the last 30 days (May 27-June 26) has increased by 37% compared to the previous month, from 89.5 million to 122.5 million, supported by the opening policies of individual countries, the increased number of vaccinated people and the reduction of restrictions. Last month, Europe’s performance was particularly impressive, with a 62% increase over the same period last year and a daily growth rate of 2.5%. In recent weeks, the interest has diminished; today, the average daily growth rate has stabilized at 1%.

 

During the last 30 days, travelers have searched for an average of 4 million flights per day to European destinations, especially to Mediterranean countries; in fact, Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey are the destinations for which there is the greatest interest and represent, alone, more than half of the searches (54.2%). 20.1% of tourists searched for flights to Spain, which remains the most popular destination for travellers with 25.3 million searches. Its market share has decreased slightly compared to the previous month, but not because searches have decreased; interest in other European countries are growing more strongly, resulting in the slight decrease of flight searches to Spain. After Spain, Italy has the second most flight searches, with 17.5 million searches, 48% more than the previous month. In third is Greece, with 14.3 million searches (a 43% growth rate) and, in fourth (but catching up quickly) is Turkey, with 11.3 million searches (a growth rate of 92%); in fact, the Istanbul airport is the most searched airport out of the European countries. This is followed by Palma de Mallorca (3.56 million), Barcelona (3.40 million), Athens (3.07 million) and London (2.98 million).

 

TURKEY. Together with Italy, Turkey has the highest growth rate out of the European destinations. During the last 30 days, searches have increased at an average daily rate of 1.3% but, in fact, the country has been growing steadily for three months. Since April, interest in Turkey has been growing strongly, with travelers searching for an average of 185,000 flights per day; however, today, the average is 404,000 searches per day, with an average growth rate of 1.3%. Most of the flight searches for Turkey are for the Istanbul airport (of the total number of searches), with 3.56 million searches.

 

THE UNITED KINGDOM. There were 8.23 million searches to the UK in the last 30 days, only 9% more than the previous month. The average daily growth rate is just under the average, at +0.8%; while the rapid inoculations of the vaccine initially stimulated demand (especially outgoing demand), the traffic light system set up by the British government has blocked it, discouraging travelers from visiting. To date, only a handful of countries are included in the green list; all the others are subject to a minimum ten-day quarantine, which makes the idea of traveling to the UK more complicated for most travelers. In addition, with the spread of the Delta variant, the UK is no longer among the safe countries on the and many countries – such as Italy – are reintroducing mandatory quarantine for travellers. This trend shows the uncertainty of demand, which is now mainly domestic (35%) and is primarily looking for last-minute flights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

About Destination

Destination is a market intelligence project created by Lybra – developers of the most complete, machine learning, data-centric Revenue Management System (RMS) available on the market – to share real-time, region-specific statistics, information and trends in the world of tourism.

Every day, Lybra analyzes millions of datasets – data collected from thousands of hotels’ PMS and flight search data from a leading metasearch booking engine – to help hoteliers “look ahead to better understand the present;” in other words, Lybra helps hoteliers understand the upcoming demand for their destination and gives them the revenue management tools and actionable insights necessary, to maximize bookings and revenue.

The aim of Destination is to give hoteliers and DMOs a more expansive view of tourism news and trends in different regions around the world. Destination produces weekly Travel Demand Reports, which share tourism developments for a specific country/region and analyze how the region’s travel news has impacted tourist demand. Follow Destination on LinkedIn to gain access to the upcoming Travel Demand Reports, which are published every Tuesday.

 

 

 

 

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Lybra Destination powered by Zucchetti Travel Data Lake

The Travel Data Lake of the Zucchetti Group collects and manages millions of accommodation searches every day. Thanks to these, it is possible to have a statistically significant overview of future tourist demand and extract valuable information on the profile of travelers. The system anonymously collects the stay searches made by travelers through the CRS of the Zucchetti group, providing an accurate forecast of hotel demand (period, destination, length of stay, etc.). Zucchetti is the largest Italian software house: with over 40 years of experience, in 2021 it has more than 700,000 customers, revenues of over 1.3 billion euros, and a group of over 8,000 people. Thanks to its Hospitality division, which supplies digital tools to over 50% of the accommodation facilities in Italy, in 2020 Zucchetti developed the Travel Data Lake, the largest predictive hub in Italy, with the aim of centralizing the forecast data from the group’s Booking Engine.

The data is processed by Destination, the market intelligence platform of Lybra Tech, a company of the Zucchetti Group specialized in tourism technologies and data analysis. Lybra Destination is a multi-source dashboard that helps Decision Makers leverage the potential of future data: it is the only tool capable of managing all the data in the territory by simultaneously analyzing multiple sources. By harnessing the power of AI and machine learning, Lybra Destination helps tourist destinations guide the decision-making process and monitor the impact of their promotional activities.

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