 | Holiday bookings with flights to Hurghada increased by 52% compared to January 2014, reflecting Egypt’s strong comeback in recent months, figures from leading German holiday reservations provider Traveltainment showed. Hurghada, which already saw a 35% rise in bookings last December and 22% in November, was the third-largest destination airport for package holidays from Germany last month with a 12% share of bookings.
In contrast, the current weak demand for Turkey was reflected in a 12% drop in package bookings to Antalya which followed a 4% decline in December. The Turkish Riviera gateway saw its share of German package holiday bookings soften to 29% in January.
After several months of rising bookings there was slower demand for Greece in January, according to the Traveltainment figures. Package bookings to Heraklion (Crete) rose by just 1% and to Rhodes by 2%, leaving the two islands with a lower market share last month.
Majorca had a good sales month with German package bookings to Palma airport up by 2%, according to the Traveltainment figures. Palma increased its market share by four percentage points to 24% last month. There were mixed trends for the Canary Islands with low growth for flights to Las Palmas and Arrecife but slight drops for Fuerteventura and Tenerife South.
Tunisia also dropped back with a 24% fall in packages to Enfidha airport in January.
Traveltainment’s Bistro system is used by some 11,000 travel agencies in Germany to make package holiday bookings from 130 tour operators, while its Internet Booking Engine is used by more than 350 online travel agents and portals. In total, the Amadeus subsidiary processes more than 250,000 holiday bookings per month. | | |