NAN-F-31
Holiday
Frankfurt, March 2, 2017 (Reuters/NAN) Summer bookings to Turkey by German holidaymakers are down by more than half after a spate of bombings, with tourists travelling to Greece and Egypt, German Market Researcher (GfK) said.
Tourism, which adds about 30 billion dollars to Turkey’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) each year, had been hammered by attacks blamed on IS and Kurdish militants that scared away tourists over the past year.
Summer bookings from Germany were down by 58 per cent at the end of January from a year ago.
“Greece is clearly benefiting from that and Egypt as well,’’ Doerte Nordbeck, Head of Travel and Logistics Germany at GfK, said ahead of the world’s travel fair in Berlin.
Germans’ summer bookings for Greece were 67 per cent higher than a year ago by the end of January.
Nordbeck cited booking data from travel agencies and online portals that the country has now replaced Turkey as Germans’ second-most popular holiday destination after the Balearic islands.
Tour operator TUI had said in January that it had added around 40 per cent more capacity on the Greek islands of Crete, Rhodes and Kos to meet demand.
GfK said bookings for Egypt were up by 91 per cent in 2016, but were down by 23 per cent from before the 2011 uprising.
Norbert Fiebig, President of German travel Association DRV said hotels in Turkey were responding by slashing their prices, while chains in Spain and Greece were taking advantage of rising demand to increase rates.
Booking portal Holiday check said that German bookings had shown hotel prices in Turkey were down by 12 per cent from a year ago and those in Egypt were still down by 8 per cent.
It said that prices in Greece were five per cent higher in 2016. (Reuters/NAN)
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Edited by Celine-Damilola Oyewole/Ese E. Ekama