Tourism to Benefit from Great Price Discounts this Year
Tourists will benefit this year from strong price discounts as a result of the sector’s crisis still going on since late 2001, according to an economic report issued by the Dresdner Bank and put out before the upcoming opening of the International Tourism Marketplace in Berlin scheduled from March 12 through 16.
According to the world’s largest travel companies, discounts –some of them in double digits- will have the primary goal of rekindling people’s wanderlust following three years of discouragement, insecurity, fear and uncertainty.
The crisis unleashed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States got even worse off with the war in Afghanistan, the world war against terror, the SARS outbreak and finally the 2003 war in Iraq.
Price tags for travels to the classic sunny destinations in the Mediterranean are almost 33 percent off during the high-peak season as long as reservations are booked way in advance.
Neckermann, a traditional Germany-based travel agency, is averaging 15 percent discounts, while travel packages offered by TUI –the world’s largest tour operator- are nearing 8.5 percent off. To top it all off, there are great discount offers and special packages available through late March and early April –Europe’s off-peak season.
The stimulus plan to booked-in-advance reservations is benefiting both tourists and travel companies, said Hans-Peter Muntzke, a tourist sector analyst for Dresdner Bank, Germany’s third-largest private bank.
Thus, customers clinch a booking to their destination of choice, while travel companies have more wiggle room for their planning. Tourists who sign up for this discount plan are supposed to let operators know, as early as January or February, about their plans to travel, for instance, in August.
Experts are warning travelers not to zero in so much on eleventh-hour offers or to rely on short-term vacation plans. Tourist companies have slashed their availabilities in this particular segment due to the financial uncertainty that this kind of upfront planning implies.
According to experts’ forecasts, German trekkers, by far the itchiest feet all across Europe, will shell out approximately five percent more money this year to spend their vacations overseas after a similar decline nicked the year before.
On the heels of a three-year period marked by travel shrinkage, fear of potential terrorist acts, the war in Iraq and the SARS outbreak, experts now believe the world travel sector might be eventually coming out of the woods in 2004.
