Home

NEWS

2009 September 15
Washington - The International Air Transport Association (IATA) today announced a revised global financial forecast predicting airline losses totaling US$11 billion in 2009. This is US$2 billion worse than the previously projected US$9 billion loss due to rising fuel prices and exceptionally weak yields. Industry revenues for the year are expected to fall by US$80 billion (15%) to US$455 billion compared with 2008 levels.

2009 September 13
Dead Cats
This month, September, is likely to be the start of what the financial industry calls the Dead Cat Bounce. The DCB theory suggests an automatic correction on a sizeable decline in the previous year; even a dead cat bounces.
In practical terms, this indicates that many of the measures that started to show a fall after the Lehman Bros bank collapsed in September 2008 (but more starting from October) will likely see an increase with measures for September 2009. In some cases, the apparent bounce will be substantial - some starting above 10% growth.
This is of course a statistical illusion, because the real check should be whether there is growth in comparison with 2007 measures. But that will not matter; the commentariat will proclaim a new boom.
However, that is good for business, even if based on misreading data. Just as the extent of the fall was an exaggeration, so will be the bounce back.

2009 September 09
Outbound Swiss moves
A survey by Mondial Assistance, travel insurance, published in Travel Manager, finds that 74% of travellers from Switzerland will maintain their travel frequency this year.
However, making the survey hard to believe is the finding that 21% of travellers expect to travel more, leaving just 5% who plan to travel less.
We believe either the questions were framed wrongly, or the travellers are not telling the truth.

2009 September 01
New ‘World Travel Industry Index’ from Travel Business Analyst
At the mid-year mark, the world’s travel business was an estimated 5% down on June 2008, according to the World Travel Industry Index. This is an improvement on May, although April* was only 2.5% down.
The WTII, compiled by Travel Business Analyst, includes traffic data from across the industry in the three main regions - Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America.
Murray Bailey, research director of Travel Business Analyst, says: “The WTII is a measure for traffic - travellers through airlines, hotels, destinations. It does not include revenue.”
Bailey says the WTII was started after the collapse of Lehman Brothers bank in September 2008. “There was much talk in the industry on what was happening, but it all seemed to be anecdotal,” he says. “We had no clear idea on what precisely was happening, and we needed to know.
“So we started what is now called the WTII so that we would have a better idea of precise measures. We now find this invaluable to track trends.”
Bailey adds that Travel Business Analyst has compiled an Index on the prices of quoted travel stocks for some years, and so this WTII complements those measures.”
The WTII is published in the monthly market newsletter of Travel Business Analyst as part of its Market Monitor - which tracks 100 travel measures around the world. Originally entitled ‘Crisis Market Monitor’ when started in October 2008, it was renamed in July, and offered as a separate product.
Travel Business Analyst also provides ad hoc copies of the WTII to travel industry partners on request.

2009 July 05
Visitors down
Visitor arrivals fell 11% in the first quarter, see table, according to the WTO (World Tourism Organization). Europe, counting more than half the world total, fell more, by 13% in Q1, but after Q1 there were signs of improvement - meaning a reduced fall. The Americas was down 6% and also showing improvement. Asia Pacific was down less, 8% although it too was showing, much clearer, improvement.
An irony is that these results are almost switched for air traffic - AsPac is down more than other main regions.
There are complications with reading these results. Figures for France - which reports the highest visitor counts in the region - has reported only through February. Thus its large 13% decline weighs heavily on other results. Although there are no special indicators than visitor arrival counts in France will be much better or worse than general patterns, that fall does seem high.
Spain, the destination we count as the largest visitor destination in the region (because of the counting methodology in France, and higher transit traffic), reported the biggest decline of the main destinations. However, its 16% fall is mainly because it has a high share of visitors from Germany and the UK (totalling 45%); two outbound markets, and economies, which have been particularly hard hit in this crisis.
The surprise, though, is the steep fall in the UK - also down 13%. Why? Although the economy can be blamed for the similar fall in UK-outbound travel, why inbound? The economy’s fall has also caused the UK’s currency to fall and that, together with price mark-downs by the industry, should make the destination particularly price-attractive this year.
That said, much of the UK’s growth in recent years was coming from new markets such as East Europe - almost heavily touched by the economic crisis (which includes temporary workers in the UK).
The US still accounts, just, for the highest single share of visitors (11%), and that market has fallen fast, low prices or not. However, airline traffic figures indicate that the worst of the fall is over - see other report in this issue.
These world totals are worse than the WTO expected, and so it has marked downwards its forecasts for this year. The organisation has been constantly downgrading expectations for 2009: in November 2008, it forecast 0-2% growth in arrivals for 2009, in February this year 0% to -2%, although adding that it could be -3%. Just before mid-year it said it was expecting a 2-3% fall for all-2009.
Currently, the WTO forecasts a fall of 4-6% for 2009. Following that 11% Q1 decline and around -8% Jan-Apr, the WTO forecasts a 4-6% fall May-August, then 3-5% September-December.
WTO does not combine all-world spend figures over part-years, but we estimate a fall of around 8% YTD. But WTO’s spending data is skewed by currency movements, and the general shortcomings in the original data. In 2008 growth in US dollars was 10.2%, but 2.7% in Euros; WTO estimates real growth was up 1.8%, near-matching the 1.9% growth in arrivals.
Our own World Travel Industry Index - see page 1, column 1 - shows an 11% fall in March following the same in February, and 7% in January.
Growth in 2009 visitor arrivals, %

2009 June 06
British Airways' ASKs in May 2009 fell 5.3% , RPKs fell 6.5%, resulting in a passenger load factor fall of 1.0-points, to 75.1%. Traffic comprised a 17.2% fall in premium traffic and a 4.2% fall in non-premium traffic.

2009 June 05
New PhoCusWright surveys:
[] The US online vacation rental market is expected to reach US$4.7bn in 2010, up from US$2.8bn in 2007.
[] PCW says European travellers take four trips per year. PCW says average per trip spend is US$1913 (at US$1 to €0.80), of which 35% is spent online. 31% of those surveyed purchase all their travel online.
[] Meetings. In 2008, PCW forecast that the US groups and meetings market would grow 3.3% to US$175bn. It now says this was achieved. No new details have been given, but earlier PCW expected that 41%, thus US$39bn, would be booked online in 2008.

2009 June 03
US 2008 air traffic
Overall growth of air passenger traffic to-and-from (t/f) the US in 2008 was up 3.6%, although it slowed towards the end of the year, see Table 1. Over the year, traffic t/f Europe (based on the markets that we track) did better, growing at 5.0%.
The UK has lost share this decade, falling from 16% of the total in 2000, to 13% in 2008. That helped pull down the all-Europe share, from 37% to 34%.
Average annual growth has been slow this decade - averaging only just over 1% over all markets. That makes some in Europe look not so weak, and Germany’s and Spain’s 4% look fast.
We have added other significant markets, see Table 2. In Asia Pacific, both t/f China and t/f India have had fast growth. But at the end of 2008, both were slipping, with India show the biggest drop - from 66% growth in September 2008 to just over 0% in December.
In Europe, the next largest market (not shown in Table 1) was t/f Denmark, reporting a slight decline. Of others, t/f Russia still showed a strong increase, up 22%. In the UAE, where Dubai is the main market, growth was up 70%.
Table 1
Air passengers to/from US, main markets

Table 2
Air passengers to/from US, secondary markets, 2008

Iberia.com slows
The airline does not reveal the same information on iberia.com each year, so systematic tracking is not possible. But results for 2008, see table, indicate that internet revenue increased 6% (Iberia reports 7.5%; our data is based on calculations from released figures).That pushed up share of internet sales on the airline’s total revenue to just under 10% - compared with just under 1% as recently as 2000.
Growth of sales on Iberia’s sites outside Spain still showed good growth, although the 17% increase was still down on 31% in 2007. More surprising is the apparent fall in non-air sales. Our calculations indicate a fall of 30-40% in terms of hotel and car rental sales, although these are still above levels since Iberia first published them, in 2005.
However, despite some weak results, average annual online revenue growth on iberia.com since 2000 has been a sizeable 41%.

Iberia's internet profile

2009 May 01
IPK’s outbound report
Other findings we have obtained from IPK studies on outbound travel in 2008 (main report in TBA’s April issue):
[] From Europe:
-short trips increase 9%, longer trips 0%.
-cities - 12.6mn arrivals in Paris, 12.3mn London, Vienna 5.3mn, Rome 5.2mn, Berlin 4.7mn.
-highest spenders are travellers from Switzerland, lowest from Poland.
-40% booked on packages, up 4%.
-Those travelling on holidays totalled 294mn up 5%, on business 63mn up 1%.
[] From Germany:
-International nights 730mn up 4%, spend US$91bn (at US$1 to 0.75), up 6%.
-Of the 76mn international travellers: 52mn, up 1%, were on holiday; 10mn, up 6%, on business.
[] 2009 outlook:
-Travel is still a “priority” for those earning more than US$27,000.
-In Europe, 40% will change their travel plans this year. Varies from 64% that will change in the ‘worst’ country, to 19% in the ‘best’. In North America, a worrying two-thirds will change their plans in 2009. (In Asia Pacific, 60% will change, but IPK says its sample was too small to give equal credibility to this measure.)

2009 May 01

Accor plans to open 80 hotels in Asia Pacific through 2010, including:
-Indochina. 10 in Vietnam.
-Indonesia. Plans to add 13 through 2010.
-Thailand. To add three in Bangkok and in Samui, through 2011. Seven more for other destinations, including Phuket.
[] Outrigger, plans:
-Bali. Second planned.
-Hainan, China. A 550-unit resort.
-Koh Samui. Abandoned?
-Phuket. Second planned.
[] Sol Melia hopes to have 4/5 more hotels open or under construction in the next 2/3 years. SM will concentrate on its Gran Melia brand, and in big cities, with China a priority.

2009 January

CRISIS MARKET MONITOR
(Excerpt from Travel Business Analyst issues.)
World/multi-region:
World travel stocks index: Sep 57; Oct 47. Industry IATA air traffic (RPKs): Sep -2.9%; Oct -1.3%; Nov 4.6%.

Other region:
US hotels Oct: occupancy -6.5%; rate -0.5%.
US Thanksgiving holiday; trips -1.4%.
New York ‘luxury’ hotels Oct: occupancy -5.7%; rate -6.5%.
Southwest Airlines seat sales: Sep -8.1%; Oct +0.4%; est Nov -8%.
United Airlines seat sales: Sep -7.9%; Oct -9.4%; est Nov -18%.

Asia Pacific:
AsPac airlines (AAPA) international seat sales: Sep -8.2%.
AsPac travel stocks index: Sep 73; Oct 57.
AsPac IATA air traffic (RPKs), Sep: -6.8%. Oct: -6.1%; Nov -9.7%.
Australia resident departures: Sep +2.7%.
Australia visitor arrivals: Sep -7.6%.
Bali visitor arrivals: Sep +18.7; Oct +23.8%.
Eva Air seat sales, Sep: -14.3%. Oct: -3.0%.
Cathay Pacific seat sales: Sep -0.7%; Oct +2.6%.
China Southern seat sales: Sep -0.9%; Oct +8.3%.
China foreign visitor arrivals: Sep -15.1%; Oct -11.5%.
Hawaii visitor arrivals: Sep -18.5%; Oct -12.3%.
Hong Kong airport passengers, Sep: -4.7%.
Hong Kong visitor arrivals: Sep +3.5%; Oct -1.4%.
India visitor arrivals, Sep: +1.5%.
Japan Airlines intl seat sales: Sep -17.1%; Oct -12.8%.
Japan citizen departures: Sep -9.7%; Oct -9.5%.
Japan visitor arrivals: Sep -6.9%; Oct -5.9%.
Jet Airways seat sales, Oct: -1.7%.
Macau visitor arrivals: Sep +2.1%; Oct +2.2%.
Korea resident departures: Sep -12.1%; Oct -5.8%.
Korea visitor arrivals: Sep +5.4%; Oct +0.7%.
Malaysia visitor arrivals: Sep -0.1%; Oct +9.0%.
Maldives visitor arrivals: Sep +4.6%; Oct -4.0%.
New Zealand visitor arrivals: Sep -6.6%; Oct -3.3%.
Qantas Group seat sales, Sep: -0.2%.
Singapore air passengers, Sep: -0.3%.
Singapore Airlines seat sales: Sep -1.6%; Oct +1.3%.
Singapore airport passengers, Sep: +4.5%.
Singapore visitor arrivals: Sep -4.1%; Oct -8.1%.
Taiwan resident departures: Sep -13.3%; Oct -4.9%.
Thai Airways seat sales, Oct: -12.2%.
Thailand visitor arrivals: Sep -20.7%; Oct -11.1%.
Tokyo Narita airport passengers, Sep: -10.1%.
Vietnam visitor arrivals: Sep -20.0%; Oct -10.8%.

Europe:
Europe travel stocks index: Sep 50; Oct 42.
Europe airlines (AEA) international seat sales, Sep: -1.6%.
Europe IATA air traffic (RPKs), Sep: -0.5%. Oct: +1.8%; Nov -3.4%.
Air France seat sales: Sep -1.5% (Eur/dom -2.5%); Oct +5.7% (Eur/dom +3.7%).
British Airways seat sales: Sep -5.6% (Eur/dom -5.9%); Oct -5.6% (Eur/dom -6.5%).
Italy hotels, Oct: occupancy -13%, rate -9%.
London airports international passengers: Sep Gatwick -6.5%; Heathrow -3.7%; Stansted -5.1%. Oct LGW -10.4%; LHR -3.7%; STN -6.9%.
London ‘luxury’ hotels Oct: occupancy -3.7%; rate -5.0%.
Lufthansa seat sales: Sep -0.4% (Eur/dom -0.4%); Oct -3.2% (Eur/dom -3.0%).

The Tourism Authority of Thailand expects visitor arrivals to stop falling by the second half of this year, then start growing from Q3, reaching 14mn; the 2008 total was 14.3mn.
Thailand’s central bank, however, forecasts that visitor arrivals this year will drop 8.8%.

Back to Top