Informe semanal noticias mercado alemán de la Oficina de Turismo de Tenerife en Fráncfort
Market News
- Turkey and cruises should drive German market growth: According to the latest fvw dossier, the German organized travel market could achieve low growth this year thanks to strong demand for Turkey and cruise holidays after a poor start for summer holiday bookings; industry leaders are also hoping to see growth in the market. As we already know, Germans are booking their summer holidays late this year. Experts believe consumers may be holding back with bookings after last year’s hot summer persuaded many people to book directly and drive instead of flying to the Mediterranean on package holidays. Nevertheless, they still forecast “low single-digit” growth in revenues in 2019. “Demand is so far being driven by Turkey, which has a dramatic 58% bookings increase.” This is on top of last year’s strong rise to 4.5 million visitors from Germany. Cruise holidays remain on the growth path and, according to GfK tourism expert Roland Gassner, are gradually taking on the function of a traditional multi-destination touring holiday. Bookings for this kind of holiday declined by 8% last year.
Destination Development
- Turkish Riviera: There was some good news for Turkey as package holiday bookings with Antalya as the destination airport rose by 6% last month according to FVW using Traveltainment numbers. However, this was well behind the high double-digit growth rates seen over the last few months. The second-largest destination, Palma, continued its recent decline with a 13% fall that follows double-digit falls every month since last July. Similarly, the Canary Islands again attracted fewer bookings in January, as has been the case for most of the past year. The Egyptian Red Sea resort of Hurghada showed the heaviest year-on-year decline last month, with a 24% drop, but this is in comparison to extremely high growth rates in early 2018. In terms of market share Antalya remained the clear leader last month with 28%, well ahead of Palma (19%) and Hurghada (15%).
Aviation News
- Two new offers for insolvent Germania: The negotiations about a takeover of the insolvent Berlin airline Germania are apparently becoming more concrete: three investors are interested in a takeover; two of them have already submitted a concrete offer. According to insolvency administrator Wienberg, the interested parties come from the aviation industry as reported by the Berliner Morgenpost. The current bidding process involves a complete package consisting of a large part of the route network of Germania Fluggesellschaft GmbH, maintenance and service capacities of Germania Technik GmbH and Germania Flugdienste GmbH. However, there are some interested parties who would like to take over the maintenance and service work without flight operations, but an overall solution is desirable. The Swiss subsidiary of the insolvent Germania already has a new owner: Swiss entrepreneur and Air Prishtina boss Leyla Ibrahimi-Salahi took over 100% of Germania Flug AG.
- Thomas Cook Airlines must presumably prepare for hard Brexit: It is still uncertain whether Britain will leave the EU without a treaty on 29 March or whether the Brexit will be postponed until 2021, as British newspapers speculate on the basis of EU circles. However, it is clear that the Brexit will cause major problems for British airlines. This also applies to the airline of the Thomas Cook Group, including Condor, as the tourism group with headquarters in London is majority owned by the UK and would no longer be a European airline after a Brexit. It would then be threatened by a loss of take-off and landing rights. This would mainly concern connections of the British TC carrier to European destinations such as Spain, Greece or Portugal. Representatives of the EU states and the parliament have already agreed on temporary measures to avoid flight cancellations after an unregulated Brexit as the FVW wrote in a report. The arrangement is designed to ensure that UK licensed airlines can maintain connections between the UK and the other 27 EU Member States for up to seven months and that safety certificates are mutually recognized for a transitional period. Nevertheless, there are many uncertainties, especially regarding the summer season.
Tour Operator News
- Flight chaos diminishes profits of tour operator: 2018 was a turbulent year for the leading tour operators. Although the Thomas Cook Group increased its turnover in the 2017/18 financial year, it still had a loss after tax of 184 million euros following a narrow profit of 10 million euros in the previous year. The TUI Group again achieved a double-digit increase in operating earnings in 2017/18, namely by eleven percent to 1.2 billion euros. The hotel and cruise businesses are responsible for this increase and also the division expanded through acquisitions. Meanwhile, DER Touristik Deutschland is merging its tour operator business across the board in Frankfurt and Cologne, thereby cutting more than 200 jobs, which corresponds to 10 percent of employees in the tour operator sector. The company wants to work more efficiently and strengthen the earnings that have fallen in the German tour operator business compared to previous years. Due to the chaotic summer, the airlines suffered numerous flight delays and cancellations, and tour operators had to organize compensation payments, rebookings and replacement flights. In addition, the tour operators have lost money due to the insolvencies of Niki and Small Planet and the Germania bankruptcy is also creating new costs due to changes in bookings. In terms of sales at least, all tour operators with a turnover of more than one billion euros increased their turnover with the exception of DER Touristik, which again had to cope with a slight decline. TUI Deutschland consolidated its leading position with a plus of seven percent.
- Alltours profits drop by a third: German tourism group Alltours profit fell to 42 million euros in the financial year ending October 2018 from the record of 63 million euros in the previous year. However, tour operators Alltours and Byebye increased turnover by 4% to 1.44 billion euros and customer numbers by the same percentage to 1.73 million. Germany was the dominant source market, followed by the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland.
- TUI bookings are at the previous year’s level: TUI Germany CEO Marek Andryszak also sees «good economic conditions for the current year». Touristik CEO Stefan Baumert reports: «The disproportionate growth in the eastern Mediterranean is the most noticeable trend in the summer of 2019.” Top-climber is Turkey with high double-digit bookings, Egypt also recorded strong growth in bookings. With a booking increase of 17%, Cyprus is also among the winners. The record summer last year also brings increasing booking figures for Germany. In terms of long-haul destinations, the USA, Jamaica, Mexico, the Maldives and Indonesia in particular are currently providing «good growth» compared to the previous year. Attractive prices thanks to good exchange rates boosted the long-distance travel trend in the summer. More and more holidaymakers are also booking «green travel» in hotels that are committed to environmentally friendly and social hotel management. In 2018, 2.2 million German tourists booked «green» hotels, an increase of 18.2% compared to the previous year.
Best regards and enjoy your weekend,
your GCE Team