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

  • Destacamos
  • Cruise News

Cruises continue to boom: For the first half of 2019, CLIA Germany reports more than one million German passengers who went on a cruise, an increase of 17 percent in comparison to the same period in the previous year. All age groups recorded good double-digit growth. For the entire year 2019, the association expects a total of 2.5 million passengers. Most travelers preferred European destinations for their cruise. One quarter of all passengers went on a cruise to the Mediterranean Sea as the most popular tourist destination. The Canary Islands (17.7%) and Northern Europe (15%) were equally popular. Cruises in Africa, the Middle East and in Asia also recorded growth compared to the same period of the previous year, however only in the single-digit range.

  • Market News

Sales soar as Cook customers book new holidays: According to leading travel trade magazine FVW, the ‘Cook effect’ continued in October as German customers of the insolvent company booked alternative summer and winter holidays with other tour operators, thus boosting overall sales figures, the latest monthly Travel Insights analysis showed. With hundreds of thousands of advance bookings cancelled by Thomas Cook Germany following its insolvency in late September, many customers played safe over the following month and booked another holiday instead, either last-minute deals for the autumn half-term school holidays in October, or for the coming winter season. As a result, sales revenues for last-minute holidays in October (the final month of the summer 2019 season) soared by a dramatic 33% compared to the same month last year, albeit on low volumes, according to analysis of sales by 2,000 representative travel agencies, OTAs and tour operator websites by market researchers Travel Data + Analytics (TDA). This last-minute surge left overall sales for the summer 2019 season up by 1%, and thus showing low growth after months of fluctuating demand compared to the strong previous year. Despite the late re-bookings by Cook customers, travel agents ended the summer with a 1% drop in revenues while online channels generated solid growth of 7% compared to summer 2018. Overall, the 2018/19 tourism year closed with a low 2% increase in sales revenues as a strong winter season partly compensated for the weak summer season. Importantly, however, the TDA figures do not yet include any cancelled Thomas Cook holidays due to reasons connected with German insolvency law. Such consolidated figures, showing ‘new’ bookings minus cancelled ‘old’ bookings, would be significantly lower.

DER travel agencies increase their conversion rates: As part of their digital upgrade, DER travel agencies implemented an online appointment tool for consumers. After one year, Managing Director Andreas Heimann reports a positive feedback: The conversion rate is rising. After a consultation without a booking, customers receive targeted mailings, based on their customer profile data. «The conversion rate has increased since the start of sending the targeted mailings,» he says. In order to find the ideal timing, customer interests are obtained digitally or via the app and clustered. «That increases the hit rate,» Heimann is sure. Another advantage of the new digital upgrade is the possibility arrange appointments online. «This generates many new customers,» says Heimann. Moreover, the conversion rate, which is usually around 25 percent, increases to more than 50 percent with fixed appointments. Around 20 to 30 percent of all customers now make an appointment – and the number is rising.

  • Tour Operator News

DER Touristik is officially taking over hotel brand Sentido: Subject to antitrust approval, Sentido will be transferred to DER Touristik. As announced on 8 November 2019, the travel company will now take over the hotel brand of the insolvent Thomas Cook Germany. DER Touristik would like to offer the independent Sentido franchise partners a new, safe and entrepreneurially successful home. Dr. Ingo Burmester, CEO of DER Touristik Central Europe, says: “Sentido is a strong, high-profile hotel brand with the highest customer satisfaction. This makes it an ideal addition to our hotel portfolio. We will use the strength of our tour operators and our very large distribution network to offer the Sentido houses nationwide. The goal is to stabilize and expand the Sentido hotel portfolio.”

Hoteliers want earlier payments from tour operators: The break-up of Thomas Cook in Germany is nearing completion but hoteliers in major destinations who lost heavily from the insolvency are demanding earlier payments from tour operators in future, as reported by FVW. Many hotels in different destinations have not been paid for accommodation booked by Cook from July until September. The company, which declared insolvency at the end of September, generally did not pay invoices until more than 60 days after receiving them. Therefore, Turkish hoteliers are demanding earlier payments from tour operators in future as a consequence of their heavy debts caused by the Cook insolvency.

  • Aviation News

Condor offers more long-haul flights in 2020: Condor announced the 2020 summer flight schedule this week and is topping up its connections: The leisure airline will be flying non-stop from Frankfurt to Edmonton in Canada for the first time as of June 2020. In addition, long-haul destinations from Munich will be on the flight schedule again in summer 2020, with a Boeing 767 stationed in Munich as of May 2020: Condor flies from the Bavarian state capital to Cancun (Mexico), to Halifax (Canada), to Punta Cana (Dominican Republic) and to Seattle (USA). As of this week, flights from Frankfurt to New Orleans (USA), Barbados and Tobago in the Caribbean can also be booked from Frankfurt. «With the additional long-haul flights next summer, we are ideally expanding our existing summer flight schedule 2020 – not only with the new destination Edmonton in Canada from Frankfurt, but also with the non-stop connections from Munich,» says Ralf Teckentrup, CEO of Condor. «We are thus offering our guests in southern Germany an even greater selection of direct connections to their holidays and are strengthening our presence in Munich with a stationed long-haul aircraft.“

Ryanair is closing its base in Nuremberg: The delivery problems for the Boeing 737 Max series, which is still grounded, have now worsened: Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost airline is now expecting only a maximum of ten Max planes for the 2020 summer season – the plan was actually for around 60. Due to these developments, there are further cuts in the route network of Ryanair to and from Germany. The low-cost airline will close its base in Nuremberg next summer, according to the airport. It is expected that two thirds of the 20 planned routes will be cancelled. Ryanair customers who have already booked tickets for flights from April 2020 onwards will be contacted by the airline. 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Este sitio usa Akismet para reducir el spam. Aprende cómo se procesan los datos de tus comentarios.