After countless weeks of lower sales, travel agents increased revenues by 2% last month as Germans booked late summer holidays, according to the latest monthly analysis of bookings by 1,500 travel agencies by market researchers GfK, fvw.com reports. But winter bookings are still behind last year.
Although there was no last-minute boom, sales of summer holidays with departures in September and October grew by 4%. However, the accumulated fall in summer 2016 revenues remained at -7% as the overall volumes were relatively low last month.
Winter bookings remain disappointing with a 5% fall compared to 12 months ago. This was the fourth month in a row with lower sales.
In contrast, there was a surge in early bookings for summer 2017 holidays as families sought to secure their preferred destinations at discounted prices. Sales for next summer accounted for nearly 22% of revenues last month, which is six percentage points more than at the same time last year.
One clear trend is the continued strong demand for cruise holidays, with bookings surging by 23% in September, according to the monthly sales survey of some 2,500 travel agencies by IT services company TATS. This demand helped overall leisure travel sales to a 6.6% increase last month.
Overall advance bookings for the coming 2016/17 tourism year, running from November through to next October, are now showing a 5.2% increase, according to its figures.
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