The October 27, 2017 was a historic day in Spain as the country’s Catalonia crisis plunged to new depths - Catalonia declares independence. This is Spain’s gravest political crisis since the return of democracy four decades ago and many fear it could escalate further into violence. In the light of the political unrest, international air reservations for Catalonia have fallen by 22% since the beginning of October.
According to ForwardKeys, which helps forecast future travel by analysing around 17 million flight booking transactions a day, international air reservations for Catalonia have fallen 22% since the beginning of October (up to 25th of October), benchmarked against the equivalent dates last year.
Olivier Jager, CEO, ForwardKeys said: “Domestic political unrest almost always deters visitors and that is what we are seeing now – a 22% collapse in international flight bookings for Catalonia. This will also have a knock-on to other parts of Spain because many visitors arriving in Catalonia will travel around the country. If the political crisis worsens, I fear we will see a further decline in bookings. This trend will be of great concern because Travel & Tourism represents such a large proportion of the Spanish economy, over 14% of GDP*”. (*Source WTTC)
