The weekly market news:
- Airline news:
- Eurowings stocks up fleet in Dusseldorf: German low-cost carrier Eurowings is expanding the capacity at the airport in Dusseldorf. The number of flights to Bangkok and Varadero (Cuba) is enhanced during winter season. Eurowings is also adding another aircraft of the type A330 to the fleet in Dusseldorf – there are going to be eight long-haul planes in winter 2018/2019. The airline is concentrating on two airports when it comes to intercontinental flights: Munich and Dusseldorf. Eurowings sees high capacity for growth in Dusseldorf. There are 40 aircrafts of Eurowings positioned at Dusseldorf airport, connecting people to 95 destinations in Germany, Europe and the world. In total, Eurowings operates approximately 1.750 flights a week from Dusseldorf.
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- Ryanair expects drop in profit: For the first time in five years, Europe’s biggest low-cost carrier Ryanair expects a drop in profit for the current business year. CEO Michael O’Leary is “on the pessimistic side of cautious” with his forecast according to Traveller Online. Ryanair has reached a record profit of 1.45 billion Euro in 2017/2018, a plus of ten percent – despite constant crises with pilots. For this year, O’Leary foresees only 1.25 to 1.35 billion Euro, which means the first drop in five years. Reasons for the drop are costs – approximately rising by 9 percent – for fuel and staff. Ryanair aims at 200 million passengers for next year, for the current year the low-cost carrier expects 139 million, a plus of seven percent.
- Market trends & destination news:
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- Survey: TripAdvisor influenced 10% of global tourism spendings in 2017: The influence of TripAdvisor on how tourists choose to spend their money is continuing to increase, according to research commissioned by the reviews website. Research firm Oxford Economics finds that TripAdvisor’s reviews and scores influenced around 546 billion Dollars of travel spending during 2017. This represents 10.3% of all global spending on tourism which reached a total of 5.3 trillion Dollar last year. The study also reveals that viewing TripAdvisor content led to consumers taking extra trips to new destinations, as well as encouraging longer stays in new destinations and properties. The report estimates that consumers spent an extra 80 billion Dollar globally on 32 million extra trips in 2017 that would not have happened without TripAdvisor. The level of impact that TripAdvisor has on travel booking decisions varies across global regions – the site has the least amount of influence in Asia Pacific (on 9% of travel spending) and also North America (10% of spending), which the report attributes to the high number of domestic trips in the region. Europe is where TripAdvisor wields the most influence with 12.8% of travel spending from tourists in Emerging Europe being directly affected by the site’s content, while this figure was 11.6% in Western Europe.
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- Travel fair IMEX in Frankfurt attracts 9.000 visitors: Almost 9.000 business people have visited the MICE fair IMEX in Frankfurt last week. 3.500 exhibitors from 150 countries presented their new products regarding meetings, incentives, congresses and events in the Messe Frankfurt. The IMEX is one of the biggest MICE fairs worldwide – in their summary, the organizers call IMEX 2018 the most successful in terms of visitor and exhibitor numbers yet.
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- Egypt reports strong demand: 37 percent more tourists, a tremendous plus of 83 percent with regard to revenue: Egypt is back on track. An anonymous spokesperson of the Egyptian government informed the news agency Reuters about the outstanding developments. In the first quarter of 2018, 2.38 million tourists arrived in Egypt, resulting in a revenue of 2.2 billion dollars. According to FVW hotel barometer, there is a strong rise of 66 percent in bookings in the past two weeks compared to the same time period one year ago. This development means a huge silver lining for the tourism sector in the North African country. In the recent years, tourists avoided the destination due to security issues. In comparison: One of the most outstanding years was 2010, when 15 million tourists came to Egypt.
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- Swiss have highest travel budget in Europe, Germany on third rank: The average travel budget of Swiss people is at 2.710 Euro in 2018 – this makes Switzerland the “big spender” in terms of vacation according to the EUROP Assistance Urlaubsbarometer 2018. Austria comes in second with 2.645 Euro, Germany third with 2.376 Euro. The British have the highest budget growth worldwide in 2018: Plus 23 percent to 2.230 Euro. The average European plans on spending 2.000 Euro for a holiday in 2018. A big trend is still the “sharing economy”: 46 percent of Europeans – especially Millennials with 59 percent – are interested in renting an accommodation from a private person. In general, online reviews become more and more important: The three most important criteria for holidaymakers are value for price, destination and online reviews.
- Tour operator news:
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- TUI reorganizes structures: Europe’s top tourism group today announced a major reorganisation of responsibilities on its executive board of senior managers. It follows TUI’s gradual transformation over the last few years from a tour operator-based company into a broader group with sizeable hotel and cruise operations. The previous organisation of Executive Board responsibilities was largely based on the structure created after the takeover of the former British TUI Travel by TUI AG at the end of 2014. TUI’s tour operators around the world will be pooled as Markets & Airlines and managed by Executive Board member David Burling. By pooling responsibility for all markets and their airlines under one roof, cooperation between TUI’s national organisations will be further reinforced. The goal is to leverage more synergies in distribution, marketing and market innovation and increase the pace of transferring successful models from a local to a global level to benefit the subsidiaries, the group explained to FVW. Sebastian Ebel, previously in charge of the Central Region, will assume responsibility for the group’s products and holiday experiences, clustered in Hotels & Resorts, Cruises & Destination Experiences. By clustering these areas, responsibility for the group’s hotel strategy will be combined in one executive role in future to further strengthen the ambitious development plans in its business area. In addition, Ebel will become responsible for ‘TUI Tours’, which will pool the group’s destination activities. TUI has recently announced plans to expand this business considerably. He will also remain responsible for the cruise subsidiaries TUI Cruises and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises.