Tag Archives: ForwardKeys

South Asia remains the least affected region within APAC, reveals Olivier Ponti, VP Insights, ForwardKeys. He says that while the North East Asia region has taken the brunt of the crisis with bookings down by 83%, the impact on South Asia has been significantly less and the specific results in South Asia reveal that bookings are down by 60.2%.

India is still top of the mind in all the top searched markets in South Asia from all the source markets, namely UK, USA, Germany, UAE and Australia, revealed Olivier Ponti, VP Insights, ForwardKeys. “In fact, India is usually in the top two of the destinations for these markets. We can see a lot of VFR travel going on from these destinations to India,” he revealed at the PATA India Chapter’s webinar titled ‘Tourism the economic PowerHouse in an evolving landscape’.

PATA India Chapter is all set to conduct its next informative webinar ‘Tourism the economic PowerHouse in an evolving landscape’ will have international speakers –Dr. Mario Hardy, CEO, PATA and Olivier Ponti, VP Insights, ForwardKeys. The webinar is aimed at offering a global perspective on the evolution of tourism policy being adopted by various countries, as well as, an analytical view on the reorganisation of global tourism with focus on India & South Asia, Emerging Trends, future opportunities, the new normal business practices and source markets efforts to inspire travellers’ confidence. The webinar promises to be engaging, educational and practical from the perspective of travel professionals and tourism industry stakeholders.

According to recent study by ForwardKeys, 15 regional destinations have seen a drop in bookings from the USA in the past five weeks. South East Asia saw a decline of 94.1%, while South Asia bookings fell by 23.7%. Oceania saw of drop of 21.3%, Caribbean (12.5%), Central/Eastern Europe (7.7%), Northern Europe (5.5%), Middle East (4.2%), South America (3.4%), North America (3.3%), Southern Europe (2.8%) and Western Europe by (1.7%).

Up to Jan 19, 2020, outbound travel bookings from China were 7.3% ahead compared to the equivalent period of last year, but a week later, they were 6.8% behind after travel restrictions were introduced owing to Coronavirus outbreak, according to ForwardKeys data. Bookings to China have declined from 4.5% ahead to 7.2% behind the previous year over the same time period. The epidemic has caused a substantial setback in flight bookings for the Chinese New Year period, 10th January – 6th February 2020.

From the US, the highest number of bookings happen in September and October, accounting for 21% of all bookings. Even in January there is a peak of 10% from US. From United Kingdom there are 2 periods of peak bookings— January, which accounts for 12% of booking volume and the period September to November, which accounts for 29% of booking volume. Both USA, UK have two peak periods, reveals an analysis of time of actual 2019 inbound bookings data to India by Forwardkeys, from 3 important long-haul source markets – USA, UK and Australia. Australia, being in the Southern Hemisphere has one peak booking peak period – July August September which account 32% of all bookings.

Inbound air bookings have declined 15.6% for the period between December 17, 2019 to Jan 11, 2020 compared with 2.5% annualised decline, reveals ForwardKeys after an analysis of over 7.5 million bookings. The analysis was conducted to assess the impact of CAA protests on inbound air bookings into India at both country and state level. The study took into consideration actual travel bookings growth/ decline into India between the period Jan 11, 2019 to Jan 11, 2020 and showed an annual decline 2.5% decline in passenger bookings into India.