Travel recovery underway – experts agree at TTRA San Antonio, Tx

The 41^st Travel &Tourism Research Association Conference www.ttra.com took place just a few yards from The Alamo www.thealamo.org from 20^th to 22 June. The location - best associated with a Last Stand - did not reflect the mood of the conference and its wide range of expert speakers.

The big questions at the conference really were – Has the recovery in tourism begun yet? Will it be business as usual soon?

Speakers such as Duane Vinson of STR and Randy McCaslin of PKF Consulting provided firm evidence that in the USA at least and in the Far East/Pacific there was a first quarter 2010 resurgence in hotel occupancy rates and a recovery in revenues although the latter was not of the same scale. Forecasts by PKF which indicated that it would be at least 2014 before occupancy similar to 2008 are now being revised with a shortened timescale for recovery.

The presentations are available on

www.hotelnewsnow.com for STR and www.pkfc.com/presentations

Industry pundits such as Adam Sacks of Tourism Economics and Suzanne Cook of USTA both suggested that ‘yes’ things are on the up but unemployment remains an issue that may impact travel patterns for some time – as well as property prices and their dampening effect on the available spend of the older generation.

The recovery worldwide is not yet certain and the state of some European economies was clearly a concern. The strength of the US $ was impacting negatively on travel from Europe and UK into the USA.

This was a highly successful TTRA International Conference with a very thoughtful tone throughout.

San Antonio is a major conference city which in the past three years has seen fifty new hotels come on stream. The Alamo is clearly a marquee attraction with over 3m visitors per annum but perhaps the most engaging aspect of the city is the Riverwalk which is an outstanding piece of urban design and has provided a tourism heart to the city linking all the major hotels and providing a unique ambience. One and half miles of new Riverwalk have just been created linking into the Museum district. www.thesanantonioriverwalk.com/

TTRA’s next conference is its rescheduled Europe Conference now taking place in Budapest from 1-3 September. See www.ttra-europeconference.com and www.ttra-europe.org

TTRA followers will also be delighted to hear that the TTRA Europe Chapter won the Chapter Achievement Award for the first time!

Airlines and tourism turning the corner – but Europe lags behind

Latest tourist arrival figures to the UK shows an 11% decline for the month of April – when the skies were closed for 6 days. Arrivals for the first 4 months were 4% fewer compared to the same period a year ago, with a 7% drop in holiday visitors and a 3% increase in business – the latter sector was more impacted than other in 2009. The number of mainland Europeans (from EU15) visiting the UK in the year to April was 2% lower than a year ago.

The U.S. Department of Commerce projects international travel to the United States to return to a growth mode in 2010, with a 5% increase in the current year followed by growth of up to 7% p.a. over the next three years. This will mean that the US will offset the 5% decline in the number of arrivals in 2009 from the previous year – a record year for arrivals. However, earnings from tourism are estimated to have dropped by 15% in 2009. Interestingly, the highest growth in 2010 is forecast to come from Brazil, China, South Korea, Argentina and Australia.

Global airlines will turn a US$2.5 billion profit this year, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a reversal from its March forecast of US$2.8 billion in losses. It would appear that airlines are benefitting from a strong rebound in traffic and yields, including recovery in business travel.

European airlines, however, are expected to still lose US$2.8 billion. European markets having fallen sharply last year, are now mired in slow recovering economies, government debt, a devalued euro, strikes, the impact of ash cloud closures and shaken consumer confidence.

Airlines are slow in replacing capacities cut last year to improve load factors and yields. A good example is the North Atlantic which sees a 2.4% increase in capacity this summer to an estimated 880,000 weekly one-way seats. Aircraft movements however are up just 0.5% suggesting the use of bigger aircraft, or airlines taking out some of their first or business class capacity and replacing it with more economy seats. Ireland is a marked exception this year with a 14% decrease in capacity. The top route between US and UK accounts for one in four transatlantic seats.

However, the customer is paying more. US carriers on transatlantic routes achieved a 23% better yield in April 2010 than a year earlier, the fifth straight month of increasing yields. Passenger fares for travel from the US in mid June are up to over 30% higher than at this time last year. For example recent fare comparisons (Expedia and TTC’s eFares) show that the best available fare from New York-London, $916 (up from $729 this time last year); Chicago-Paris, $1,543 ($809); Los Angeles-Frankfurt, $2,139 ($1,557). Fares to Ireland for travel over the same period this year (2009 in brackets) were New York to Dublin at $832 ($750) and Chicago to Dublin $1,259 ($828).