For this month's aviation industry webinar, Deirdre Fulton and John Grant were joined by Oliver Martin (Senior Director, Skift Inc) and Jacob Pewitt Yancey (Head of Analytics, Arrivalist) to dive into the latest global tourism trends.
The live panel discussed:
- Are tourism patterns changing? Where is everyone going this year?
- What impact, if any, might tariffs be having on tourism?
- With a flurry of new 2030 tourism targets being announced this year, where will we all be going in the next 5 years?
A look at growth trends
The panel began by starting at the top and looking at global growth trends:
- Capacity for this summer is expected to be 3.2% ahead of 2024.
- For the year to date so far (Jan - June 25), capacity is 3.2% ahead of the same months in 2024.
- Spain-UK is the top country pair in terms of summer capacity.
Tariff impacts
Next, the panel discussed one of the key topics of this month's webinar - tariffs - and began by examining the latest US visitor statistics, which had been published at the end of the previous week. (Preliminary, so subject to change).
- The results show a fall in arrivals from the Top 20 countries, with big reductions from Germany, France, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Ecuador.
- This time last year (May 2024), year-on-year growth for the top 20 visitor markets was +12.4%, with strong growth from all of the above countries.
- Year-to-date position shows that 11 of the Top 20 markets are flat or contracting.
Oliver gave his thoughts on how much impact tariffs and evolving tariff policies will have on consumers' travel decisions:
Geopolitics and aviation
In the last two months alone the industry has been impacted by a number of geopolitical events, including the escalating tensions between Israel and Iran which resulted in the closure of airspace in a number of neighbouring countries.
Whilst the industry navigates unpredictable events such as short-notice airspace closures, and makes decisions about whether to fly to areas where conflict may escalate, what is the lasting impact on consumer sentiment and decisions to fly?
TOURISM TARGETS
With 5 years to go until the end of the decade, a flurry of new 2030 tourism targets have been announced this year. The panel gave their thoughts:
What next?
Having just spent 7 years leading the research team at Visit Florida, Jacob gave an insightful round-up to summarise the panel discussion:
Watch the full webinar below
