New Survey Finds Summer Increase in U.S. Visits to Europe

According to the monthly report to the European Travel Commission (CTC) by Donald N. Martin Company, Inc., American leisure visitors to Europe increased over the summer, though overall trans-Atlantic traffic (which includes European traffic to America) resumed its decline in September and October, as the leading carriers reported average drops of 2.6 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively, for those months.

Average capacity was down 5.2 percent and 8.8 percent for the two months, with load factor at 85.2 percent and 86.1 percent. “But the big news is that U.S. traffic to Europe increased 7.3 percent in August, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce,” the report says.

“That was on top of a 3.7 percent increase for July. For the first four months of the peak season, U.S. traffic to Europe was down only 1.3 percent (we had projected a 5 percent decline for the summer, and thought that was optimistic).” The report goes on to conclude that low summer fares led to an increase in U.S. leisure visits to Europe over summer 2008 levels, and actually made up for much of the decline in business travel.

An August surge of North American travelers to Britain (up 22 percent) led the increase to all of Europe for the month. While down only 1.3 percent from 2008, the 5.2 million U.S. visits to Europe for May to August were still 8.2 percent fewer than for the record May-to-August period of 2007. In the opposite direction, summer traffic (May to July) from Europe to the U.S. was down 9.9 percent from 2008, with Britain, Italy and Spain accounting for the largest declines.

U.S. carriers reported that trans-Atlantic yields -- weak through the year – continued to drag in September, despite reduced capacity and high load factors. On U.S. carriers, they were down 22.5 percent for the month and down 20.5 percent for the year. This was just one reason that most trans-Atlantic carriers reported big losses for the third quarter.

For the winter, trans-Atlantic fares are running somewhat higher than a year ago. Low fares for Jan. 13 to 20 non-stops on major carriers as quoted this week on Travelocity (with last January’s fares in parenthesis): New York-London, $626 ($541); Chicago-Paris, $831 ($727); San Francisco-Frankfurt, $824 ($632, Los Angeles-Frankfurt).