15 May 2009

UK travellers shun Mexico due to swine flu fears

Swine flu effectively wiped out the Mexican tourism industry as UK travellers shunned the country, new figures show.

UK bookings for this summer, which were up by as much as 12% year-on-year before the outbreak, plummeted a massive 83% for the week ending May 2.

Winter 2009 holiday bookings show a similar pattern. Passenger bookings to Mexico have slipped from 13% in the week ending April 25 to -60% in the week ending May 2.

Market research firm GfK Ascent-MI, which released the statistics, said the US also suffered from the knock-on effect of the swine fly scare, with summer bookings from the UK dropping by 36% in the same period.

Mexico had been one of the star performers for this summer, showing more than 10%, considerably outperforming the total market, according to the company.

GfK Ascent-MI managing director Sarah Smalley said: "Over the past decade, a number of catastrophic events have had similar affects on popular holiday destinations, such as the terrorist attacks in Egypt and Avian Flu outbreak in Turkey.

"The Egyptian market bounced back very quickly however, whilst the impact was much more prolonged on the Turkish market."

by Phil Davies