DER Touristik: Strong start to summer travel bookings
Discounts of up to 60 percent are boosting demand for summer travel at DER Touristik, Germany's second-largest travel group. "In addition to the current boom in winter bookings, we are currently experiencing an exceptionally strong start to summer bookings," said Ingo Burmester, Head of DER for Central Europe.
Almost three times as many guests as in the previous year and 15 percent more than in the 2018/19 tourism year, the last before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, have already booked. Six out of ten consumers visited travel agencies for this purpose, which achieved higher customer satisfaction with the vacation afterwards than with online bookings.
"We have now finally left the coronavirus era behind us in terms of sales and the number of guests," said Burmester. The travel subsidiary of retail giant Rewe is not providing an absolute figure for turnover at this time. This was a good fifth higher in the 2022/23 tourism year than in the previous year, with a double-digit percentage increase in guest numbers. Europe's second-largest tour operator after TUI did not yet have quite as many customers as in the pre-crisis year 2018/19. In the calendar year, Rewe generated sales of just under five billion euros in the tourism division.
The fact that revenue increased significantly more was due to higher prices and the trend towards higher-quality accommodation. Ten percent more guests from brands such as DERTOUR, ITS and Meiers Weltreisen booked four or five-star hotels.
Among the destinations for the coming summer, Turkey is in first place, followed by Spain and Greece. Tunisia and Egypt are in fourth and fifth place respectively. The war that broke out in Israel in October dampened travel bookings for the neighboring country of Egypt in the first two weeks and led to cancellations, said Burmester. Since then, demand has normalized as most destinations are far away from the conflict zone.
Source: www.ntv.de
