Informe semanal de noticias del mercado alemán de la Oficina de Turismo de Tenerife en Fráncfort

Tour Operator News

  • Mood in sales continues to decline

After a break in March, the climate index in German travel distribution has continued to decline. Many travel agencies lack confidence in the future. Only 18 percent of travel agents believe that demand for travel services will rise in the coming months, down from 25 percent in the previous month. This is a result of the fvw Sales Climate Index, which is published monthly by the consulting firm Dr. Ing. Fried & Partner is created for the FVW. This assessment of sales is not a good sign for the booking development. After a hesitant start to the year and a volatile development in recent weeks, organizers and distributors are hoping for a strong short-term business for the upcoming summer saison.

Aviation News

  • Lufthansa is making heavy losses in the first quarter

The expensive kerosene and price war of European tickets pushed Lufthansa surprisingly to get red numbers in the first months of the year. The airline Lufthansa posted a significant loss in the first quarter: 336 million euros, as the company announce. In the same period last year, the company had made 52 million euros profit. According to Lufthansa, the decisive factor for the high losses was the high fuel prices, which increased by 202 million euros. In addition, overcapacity in Europe would have led to high price pressure.

Sales increased by three percent to 7.9 billion euros in the first quarter, according to the company. The forecast for the year remains unchanged, the airline said. «We see a good booking situation for the coming quarter,» said CFO Ulrik Svensson. At the same time, we significantly reduced our growth. As growth in European air traffic will also decrease overall, we expect a rise in unit sales again.

  • Condor cuts down on sub-contracted carriers

Condor will downscale to just two wet-lease airline partners this summer from a handful last year to keep its flight schedule as stable as possible inform the FVW. Thomas Cook Group’s German airline suffered, like other major carriers, from a wide range of external problems in summer 2018. These included the poor operational performance of several sub-contracted partners such as Small Planet Airlines (which declared insolvency last autumn). In response, Condor is tightening up on its operations for summer 2019 to ensure that it can ensure stable flight operations for parent company Thomas Cook and other tour operators.

Cruise News

  • Germans carry on sailing the high seas

According to FVW news more Germans and other Europeans are going on ocean cruises than ever before as new vessels continue to drive demand, according to new figures from industry association CLIA. Worldwide, some 28.5 million passengers went on a cruise holiday last year, a 7% rise on 2017, the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) said yesterday. This was faster growth than global tourism as a whole, indicating that cruises have again won market share compared to beach holidays and other forms of organized travel.

In Europe, ocean cruise passenger numbers grew by 3.3% to 7.2 million, which represented faster growth than in 2017 when numbers increased by 2%. In terms of destinations, more Europeans headed for the Eastern Mediterranean, up 8.5% to 746,000 passengers, reflecting greater consumer confidence in the region.

Germany remained the largest cruise market in Europe, growing by 3% to 2.2 million passengers, according to CLIA’s annual review. In contrast to the wider regional market, Northern Europe is the top destination for German cruise holidaymakers (28%), followed by the western Mediterranean (23%) and the Baltic Sea (8.4%). Significantly, the average age of German cruise passengers continued to fall last year, from 50 to 49, while the average cruise length increased slightly to 9.1 days.

Moreover, experts believe the German cruise market revenues are likely to have grown at a faster rate last year due to higher average prices. For example, fvw’s annual tour operator dossier, published in February, found that the ten largest cruise operators increased their combined revenues by 11% to nearly €4.7 billion on a 7% rise in customer numbers in 2018.

  • Celestyal Cruises New winter route

According to Tip Online news since Celestyal Cruises emerged from the former Louis Cruises in 2014, everything has changed at the Cypriot shipping company. The two ships were gradually overhauled. The Celestyal Olympia was renovated two years ago, and during the 2018/19 winter season, the Celestyal Crystal followed with an upgrade to the 43 Junior Suites with Balcony and 16 Suites.

 

GCE office is closed between April 19 including April 22 because of Easter holidays.

We wish you all a wonderful Easter-Weekend, if you are celebrating the most important Christian festival,

 

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