Brussels lockdown: How is tourism affected?

Following the recent attacks in Paris and the lockdown in Brussels, flight bookings to Brussels have collapsed. According to the latest figures, both daily bookings and cancellations, show a drop of 159% since the beginning of the weekend, when the lockdown came in to force. In the previous week, which directly followed the Paris attacks, bookings were 23% down.

The figures from travel data analyst, ForwardKeys also reveals that the source markets for travel to Brussels, the UK (-191%), Italy (-206.5%) and Austria (-236%) are proportionately the worst affected and virtually every source market has experienced net cancellations since the lockdown came in to force.

Olivier Jager, Co-founder and CEO of ForwardKeys, which monitors future travel patterns by analysing 15 million reservation transactions each day, explained: “If bookings are 100% down that indicates that no net bookings were made. 159% down means that in addition to no bookings being made, there were cancellations equal to 59% of the number of bookings made on the equivalent day last year.”

Analysis by type of travel reveals that business travel has been much more significantly affected by the lockdown than leisure travel, with bookings at -195% compared to -106% for leisure.

Somewhat encouragingly however, an analysis of forward bookings shows that business travel bookings for the weeks of December 7th and 14th are running well ahead of last year, suggesting that a significant proportion of business trips to Brussels have, in reality, been postponed by a fortnight rather than cancelled outright.

Do you have a plan to go to Brussels? or want to enjoy lower hotel prices, click herefor hotels and rates in the city.

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