Ascent-MI has launched a brand new UK outbound leisure travel market intelligence service - Leisure Travel Monitor (LTM) - with a number of key industry companies, already providing data. Sarah Smalley, Ascent-MI Commercial Director said: "With the collaboration of the UK travel industry, we aim to create a comprehensive and accurate picture of the forward booking, outbound holiday market spanning the Package, Cruise, Bedbank and Airline industries."

LTM currently provides information on 13 million holiday bookings made in the UK for outbound air packages, flight-only, accommodation-only and ex-UK cruises.

Data is received from both direct and trade channels and Ascent-MI provides a monthly data release of data with live seasonal performance for both bookings and departures.

The following booking information is available within the LTM service:

• Market volumes, average selling prices, market shares and percentage change
• Bookings split by channel; traditional shops and direct bookings
• Facts include passenger booking volume, and passenger booking revenue
• Periods of booking identified, including booking and departure month, season or year
• Results based on seasons or calendar years

 

Additional categories include

• Resort, airport of departure, airport of arrival
• Family / non-family, size of party
• Holiday duration
• Holiday type
• Booking region
• Board basis

Market Information:

Top 30 Destinations:

This information has been presented in a way that layers destinations to reflect the volumes and the values that are important to the industry. So for example, at a total level, Greece has over-taken the Balearic Islands but does not exceed them in total value.

Sarah Smalley said: "The picture for summer 07 shows many changes from summer 06. Apart from Greece over-taking the Balearic Islands in volume, Turkey has made a resurgence in 2007 and added 87,000 passengers year-on-year, showing a great recovery from its difficult position in summer 06. It is very positive to see that it has achieved this without a big drop in prices, a testament to some of the product quality."

"As expected, Ocean cruise goes from strength to strength leaping up to the number 14 spot, as more and more people are being drawn to this type of holiday. Egypt had a stunning performance in summer 06; but the drop in rankings for summer 07 is quite surprising. A brief look at summer 08 data shows that Egypt is again showing year on year growth."

"The growth to Portugal has been driven by the Algarve. This has also risen up the ranking with value, is this due to improved product quality?"

Should we be thinking differently? How Holidays are changing

Sarah Smalley, Ascent-MI said: "The first chart below looks at the mix of party size for the holidays taken in summer 2007. Overall, 70% of holiday takers were non-family and 30% family. Within this mix there are a number of surprises. The number of one-parent family holidays is extremely low compared to the population in general.
Companies are still failing to attract these. However to have almost 40% of family holidays taken by family groups of over 5 people has come as quite a surprise."

"When looking at adults again single travellers are not well catered for. The big surprise here is that one in 3 non-family bookers is in a group of 3 or more. 14% are groups of 4 travelling together. It will be interesting to delve further into the data to see how this splits out by region, destination and departure airport."

Number of passenger Family Non-family

1 0% 5%
2 2% 62%
3 25% 9%
4 35% 14%
5-10 35% 9%
11+ 3% 2%

When looking at duration there is also an interesting pattern

Duration Family Non-Family

6 nights or less 16% 21%
7 nights 39% 43%
8-13 nights 4% 6%
14 nights 40% 29%
15-28 nights 1% 2%
over 28 nights 0% 0%

"Proportionally the only duration in growth is 6 nights or less with 14 nights showing a 6 percentage points decrease for family and 3 percentage points for non-family. Peoples’ holiday habits are certainly changing. For families the proportion taking 7 night holidays is growing and, in summer 2008 may well overtake that of 14. It will be interesting to see which companies will be best suited to meet these needs."