The top five cities were Hong Kong, Bangkok, London, Singapore and Macao with Paris coming 6th, Dubai in 7th position, New York in 8th, Kuala Lumpur in 9th and the Chinese city of Shenzen in 10th.
Last week at the World Travel Market, (WTM) members of the travel industry discussed the impact of Brexit upon the trade.
What do elephants, Beatrix Potter, Durham Cathedral and Elizabethan theatre in France have in common? They are all in Adrian’s column this week
The two expanding areas for travel are luxury and budget. This was one of the interesting features to come from the WTM Vision Conference held in London this week. This is where the travel industry contemplates the future and the author of this remark was Caroline Bremner of Euromonitor, a research group that has been forecasting worldwide travel for 30 years or more.
The travel industry, like every other, is always trying to second guess what visitors want, where they want to go to and how they might book. Research presented yesterday by Euromonitor, a big player in travel research suggests that by 2015, up to 50% of us could be booking our holidays and travel via our mobile phones.
Just before Christmas, we mentioned a few ideas that some of the experts thought would flourish in 2010. Today we have the thoughts of another four groups on what they think, ABTA, IPK, STA Travel and the Intercontinental Hotels chain. You might remember that Mintel thought it would be another year of the staycation with days out and weekend breaks becoming more prominent. And Euromonitor forecast the rise of pop up hotels which could be assembled (and taken down) quickly and which would offer inexpensive accommodation.
ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents) says that Sri Lanka, Mexico and Thailand will see more tourists from the UK than they had in 2009.
Kicking off WTM is a forecast of what can be expected in the future and this comes from the research firm, Euromonitor. In 2009 they think that we will have flown 14% less, stays in hotels will be down by 16% and overall tourism will be down by 8%. The market for luxury holidays won’t recover before 2013 they think. But in the UK, they have highlighted a trend for pop-up hotels. These are almost prefabricated hotels that can be put up and taken down quickly. They are cheap to construct and cheap to stay in.
