European Travel Commission reported Trends & Prospects of European Tourism

The European Travel Commission (ETC) has just published its third quarterly report on European Tourism in 2012 - Trends & Prospects.

The following gives a brief overview of the report for the third quarter of 2012.

European travel proves resilient in the face of the weak and uncertain global economic environment, with growth in visits reported for most destinations including from both long-haul and Europeanmarkets.
• Air transport and accommodation data as well as available arrivals data indicate a slow growth as the year progressed. This is partly explained by cost-saving behaviours to face the uncertain economic environment. Hotel demand also appears to be weaker than total tourism demand indicating a rise in demand for other forms of accommodation.
• Among European airlines, long-haul air traffic demand has shown the greatest slowdown while intra-European demand remains stout.
• The strongest growth in European tourism demand is concentrated in smaller, emerging Eastern destinationswhich tend to involve lower costs than some of the more developed Western destination markets.
• Prices, and therefore revenue and profits, remain under pressure. Hotel average daily rates (ADR) in mostmarkets are still lower than pre-recession peaks, especially once wider inflation is taken into account.
• The economic outlook remains uncertain although the near-term risk of Eurozone break-up appears to have faded.
• TourMIS data on arrivals from key source markets echo the trends seen in the industry data. Intra-Europeantravel is benefitting from a shift away from more expensive, long-haul travel. Japanese arrivals continue to rebound following last year’s natural and nuclear disasters in Japan.

The full report can be downloaded from ETC’s corporate website.