Holidays are a key growth driver across all regions with a further growth of 7 per cent worldwide.
The report The World Travel Monitor covers the main trends in outbound travel demand for the first eight months of 2018 together with estimates for the full year and initial forecasts for 2019. In addition, spotlights focus on the success story of city trips, the booming segment of cruise holidays and Halal Travel, which offers great growth potential for destinations around the world.
The global tourism industry continues its success story with another exceptional travel year in 2018 with a 6 per cent growth of total outbound trips in the first eight months of the year. Overtourism and cities packed to the rim with tourists are an ongoing topic and possibly leading to a shift to other holiday types.
The first eight months of 2018 tell a clear story: the desire to travel the world is unbroken and the industry is looking at another record year.
Holidays are a key growth driver across all regions with a further growth of 7 per cent worldwide. City trips continue on an upward trend, but also Tour holidays are coming back in the picture after steady declines in the recent past. In addition, Sun & Beach holidays made strong gains too and even overtook City Trips in terms of growth. The outlook for 2019 is very positive as well and suggests a continuation of the overall strong developments in 2018, with stronger growth for North America compared to this year, and a slightly slower – yet still very positive – growth for Asia-Pacific.
Another much discussed topic are Cruise Holidays – a booming segment in the recent years. While overall the segment is still one of the smaller ones in terms of all international holidays, its development has been exceptional with double-digit growth rates and increases that were twice as much as international holidays in general.
Looking ahead, another segment that will come into the picture more and more is Halal tourism. Muslims are the fastest growing religious group worldwide and are developing a thriving middle class with growing buying power. With specific shared values among Muslims that are much stronger than among other communities catering for their specific needs is a key for success.
The World Travel Monitor final results of 2018, including the latest outlook for 2019, will be presented at the ITB Convention by Rolf Freitag, CEO of IPK International, on the 6th of March, 15:00-15:45 pm.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
