Tourism Predictions

We're going over twice this year and made all of our hotel and dinner reservations in advance. We're going to a couple of musicals in London and bought our tickets in advance rather than take a chance at the half price ticket places. We're staying away from the more famous tourist attractions more because we've seen them than because they'll be crowded. Good luck to anyone headed to Paris in July.

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Very interesting!

But you know, even in the cities for the tourism is up over the 2019 levels. It’s still possible to get completely away from it. Yes, if you go to the Louvre in Paris, it’s going to be packed. however, if you get on the metro and go to the Musée Nissim de Camondo you’ll probably be one of the very few tourists there.

The overall tourism numbers prediction for Europe in 2024 is a real no-brainer with Olympic Games in Paris and UEFA Soccer Championship in Germany.

btw: all the statistics regarding stays seldomly consider the number of people in a hotel room and do not contain the numbers of personal guest and B&B visits. Furthermore numbers on country level are not differentiated enough to provide real information. Therefore I am not a fan of these numbers and especially not of non-adding value flow heater blogs.

And for all comparing numbers 2023 to 2019 for EU be aware that EU changed a little bit in 2020.

My business last year was way, way up over 2019 and this year is looking really good too. When you go into the city, it is a lot more crowded than Feb. or March usually are.
People forget that in the fall and winter of 2019, people were starting to get sick from the "flu", having no idea it was Covid. You could tell at the Christmas markets that they were not as crowded and in fact were down about 30%. That is a lot. The Chinese tour buses simply went away in Nov. and are just now starting to come back. We had 2 months (Nov. & Dec. 2019) of low tourism in Germany in months that should have been full and I bet in other countries it was the same.

What has increased, is tourism from other countries, like Vietnam, India, Brazil, S. Korea, Singapore, etc. They were not here in big numbers before last year. I see multiple tour groups from these countries on a daily basis.

MsJo the tourism here was fairly good in November and December but I suspect below 2019 then tanked in January and February, again below 2019. But bookings look pretty good for April, May and beyond. The demographics have changed a lot. Very few Americans. A lot of Spanish speaking tourists and the majority do not speak English which is driving the local service providers nuts. I've heard the same comment a number of times. You cant go 100m down Andrassy ut wihtout hearing Spanish; Spain, Spanish.

The second largest group is Asians. I have been told by my Asian friends here that they are mostly Vientamese and Korean. In the past it would have been tour busses full of Chinese, I've seen a few, but not many. The UK stag parties and Hen parties are rare (thank G-d). Oh, the European Trust Fund Brats are still here in number, but thats just the weekends.

Prices here are still better than in the West despite the inflation, so maybe that will help in the long haul.

Presumably the hen and stag parties have now moved on to somewhere more fashionable for them, as these things move in trends.

The cheap air fares are still very much there. I was looking the other week and I can fly from Glasgow (one of my 4 equidistant airports- Newcastle, Manchester and Liverpool being the others) to Budapest on many dates for around £25 each way, hand baggage only. That £25 includes the 140 mile train journey from home to Glasgow airport (and all fees such as APD)!

I only looked at GLA- doubtless the other airports have similar fares if they fly to Budapest.

In some ways you have to be very disciplined not to take advantage of such cheap fares. To me, personally, I would be doing too much damage to the planet by taking advantage of such fares, but it is a very hard decision sometimes.

tell me about it. from Budapest just using Wizz (and more with Ryan) its generally less than 35euro to most of these destinations.

ALBANIA, AZERBAIJAN, BELGIUM BULGARIA, CYPRUS, DENMARK, EGYPT, FRANCE GEORGIA, GERMANY, GREECE, ICELAND, ISRAEL, ITALY, JORDAN, MALTA, MOLDOVA, MONTENEGRO, NETHERLANDS NORTH MACEDONIA, POLAND, PORTUGAL, ROMANIA, SAUDI ARABIA, SPAIN, SWEEDEN, SWITZERLAND TURKEY, UAE, UK (SIX AIRPORTS),

Plus about 12 euro round trip to the airport 30 minutes away.