According to Eduardo Santander, CEO and executive director of ETC, consumer interest in staying in hotels or resorts jumped by 13 percent, reaching its highest level since September 2020.
In addition, 25 percent of respondents expressed a preference for independent hotels. Continent-wide, Europe reported a 10.5 percent increase in hotel occupancy during April, May, and June.
European short-term rental reservations have recovered to [down just] 33 percent of 2019 levels throughout 2021, and now sit just behind North America making it second in terms of world region recovery, Santander said.
Furthermore, the quarterly report findings shared by ETC’s CEO showed that more than two-thirds of Europeans planned to travel in their countries or internationally during the last quarter of 2021, including last three months of the year or in the first months of 2022.
European citizens planning to travel abroad say they are most confident to travel to Poland (73 percent), Spain (72 percent), Italy (68.3 percent), The Netherlands (68.2 percent) and Germany (67.5 percent).
ETC Reveals EU’s Top Travel Markets’ Performance of 2021
Santander also noted that Europe’s performance in 2021 was low as more than half of the markets witnessed declines as low as 74 percent of the pre-pandemic levels.
In addition, he pointed out that Greece was the first country to open its border for tourists, which resulted in a strong recovery of tourism in general, hotels in Greece reached a capacity only 19 percent lower than in 2019.
Several other European markets reported increasing tourist arrivals, including Croatia, Montenegro, Luxembourg, and Monaco.
Croatia was able to extend its outstanding performance off-season, welcoming 1.9 million tourist arrivals in September, Santander said.
However, the rest of Europe has experienced a substantial decrease in tourist arrivals, with the Czech Republic standing at the end of the scale.
Furthermore, Santander said that Czechia’s travel outlook was damaged by stringent COVID-19 restrictions in the first half of the year.
More than 20 percent of the Czech Republic’s international tourists come from long-haul markets, with China and the United States ranking as the fourth and sixth largest markets in pre-pandemic levels.
Furthermore, Finland experienced a drop of inbound arrivals during 2021.
However, in pre-pandemic levels, Russia was Finland’s top source market, accounting for 12 percent of all arrivals.
Nonetheless, such facts didn’t tame down Finland’s stringent policies as none of the Russian manufactured vaccines aren’t recognized by the Finnish authorities.
