Surge in UK holiday bookings, slowest traffic growth in airlines noted in a decade

Thursday, March 5, 2020

It is expected that the British travellers will swap holidays abroad for a break closer home due to coronavirus this year. After the rise of staycation,  in the last five years heatwaves, Brexit, the weak pound, overseas terrorist attacks and the recent climate crisis led to a boost in UK holiday bookings.

The International Transport Association (IATA) recent released figures show that January had  the lowest monthly increase in global airline passengers since 2010. This was because of the Icelandic volcanic cloud due to the massive airspace closure and flight cancellations.

As compared with January 2019 demand for flights increased by just 2.4% while the year-on-year growth had been 4.6%.

IATA chief, Alexandre de Juniac said that January was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the traffic impacts seen owing to the Covid-19 outbreak. The major travel restrictions did not begin until 23 January which caused the slowest traffic growth in nearly a decade.

The negative impact of the deadly coronavirus is felt by the global travel companies, Booking Holdings is predicting 15% drop in total bookings in 2020.

It was found that the UK tourism businesses reported a rise of up to 40% in traffic to their websites.

Steve Jarvis, owner of Independent Cottages said on average for the period between January 2 to February 2020, 40% up on web visitors compared with the same period last year .Initial analysis of the most recent inquiries is that they appear to all be domestic – overseas enquiries have reduced significantly.

There are extra bookings in the UK campsites and as per Campsites.co.uk. that searches were up  year-on-year by 18 % in February and 30% in March.

Founder Martin Smith said that for peak summer most of the popular holiday parks and glamping sites have less than 20% availability. Families know where they want to go and should book now rather than missing out.

Nick Wyatt of data and analytics company GlobalData agreed that staycations are likely to make travellers feel more comfortable as they are familiar with the location, they can potentially avoid flying, and they know the health service and health structure.

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