Europe, UK driving long haul recovery

Thursday, Jan 20, 2022 0

New research from Skyscanner today reveals the destinations and routes trending above 2019 levels.

Based on Skyscanner’s global flight data, it finds travellers from Europe are driving an increase in demand for long-haul beach and sun destinations in 2022.

Mexico and the Maldives feature in over half of the top 10 country pairs, looking at routes trending above 2019 levels so far in 2022.

Both destinations attracted relatively large numbers of visitors in 2021, effectively bucking the tourism slowdown trend.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) tops the list driven by a surge of travellers from the Netherlands.

Costa Rica, Egypt, and the Dominican Republic also feature with year over year growth of over 100%.

At a route level, Cancun is the destination of choice for many European travellers, but UK travellers are favouring Orlando and New York.

Globally, itineraries with booking horizons of 7-29 days currently make up a third of bookings across Skyscanner platforms, a +25% increase compared to 2019.

Certain markets and routes are recovering well with demand exceeding pre-pandemic levels, Skyscanner says.

In Europe a fifth of consumers are currently planning trips up to two months in advance, up 14% year over year.

Skyscanner expects international medium and long haul travel to make a comeback in 2022 with demand returning as vaccination rates increase.

TravelMole Editorial Team

Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.