As I watched the flurry of heart shaped muffins and chocolates flit across my Facebook page and read about female friends asking their partners to marry them this leap year, I thought it was a good week to reflect on romantic travel.
Since 2005 the number of UK people marrying abroad has risen 27% and almost 18% of all weddings are estimated to take place abroad according to Mintel[1]. UK weddings actually declined 11.5% over the ten years to 270,000 in 2008. Future prospects look good as Mintel shows almost 4 out of 5 of those couples expecting to get married also want to have a honeymoon abroad. 37% of adults also state an interest in marrying or renewing their wedding vows abroad[2]. Travel Weekly[3] reckons the UK overseas wedding market is worth £333million a year.
What’s driving the increase?
A few factors could have triggered this rise such as:
· Lower average cost of weddings abroad with fewer guests at £6,585[4],
· Internet dating sites forecasting revenues up 16% to $1.9US billion in 2012,
· Intra EU employment rights as more countries join the EU,
· Immigration increasing the ethnic diversity of the UK population,
· More countries marketing themselves as wedding and honeymoon destinations.
Trend to older couples
Whilst the average age band for getting married first is still 20-29 years, the second most popular age band increased to 35-44 years old in 2008.
Booking patterns changing
Danny Waine at Perfect Weddings Abroad said “Couples are also keen to know down to the finest detail how much things are going to cost before committing… they either want a ‘last-minute’ wedding and get married in the next few months, or they want to book two years ahead, in order to be able to budget and save up. The main downward trend that we have seen is in the winter weddings ..which tend to be confined to ski groups.”
Wedding campaigns
Some tourist boards such as The Bahamas have invented the alluring title of “Director of Romance” and you can ask her about getting married on their 16 islands. On Valentine’s Day many of the lucky 16 couples who won a free wedding in The Bahamas on 16th May 2012 were selecting their rings at Goldsmiths in London. Source: Bahamas 16 islands wedding invitation Lucky couples at Goldsmiths Victoria, London.
In 2011 Thailand targeted the weddings and honeymoon market with sites such as Honeymooning-in-Thailand and a reality TV series called The Bachelorette™.
Civil partnerships and commitment ceremonies abroad
A handful of tour operators such as Kuoni, Amro worldwide and Perfect Gay Honeymoons (PGH) offer these ceremonies in Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and US and PGH claim this is more than 10% of their overall wedding business.
Wedding destination trends
Traditional white sand wedding markets are facing new competition. The latest Kuoni report shows the increasing popularity of UAE, Indonesia, Singapore and US for honeymoons. Rankings for Antigua, Jamaica, St Lucia and Seychelles also improved .
Danny Waine at Perfect Weddings Abroad has seen family pressures to marry in a short-haul location. “What they do is go to Cyprus for as short a period as possible, come home for a few days and then fly out on their long-haul honeymoon anyway.” Lesley Dean of White Sand Weddings claims that Mauritius is still their most popular destination, followed by the Caribbean. She sees smaller wedding groups of about 10 going abroad as it’s cheaper than a larger UK wedding .
Adventure Weddings
Countries are getting more inventive and you can now have an ice or underwater wedding, a dolphin encounter or weddings with “bungee jumping” and any number of adventures as part of your big day.
What unusual weddings abroad and trends have you heard about?
Travel Weekly “Weddings abroad: Market update and trends for 2009/10”
Posted: 21/02/2012 13:17:24
The scenes of the carnage in the streets of Homs in Syria this week are likely to have curbed our appetite for travel to this part of the world which is sadly what Egypt and Libya need right now in order to rebuild their broken economies. With youth unemployment now nearly 50% in Egypt, the country is desperately in need of its tourists. I have read stories of abandoned, starving animals which used to carry the tourists around the temple sites and I’m sure the plight of the people is just as bad.
It was therefore of no surprise to read in TTG this week that TUI has seen its North African volumes down 23% on last year. As TUI decreases capacity in the region and switches to the Canaries, the plight of the region is of real concern.
Thomas Cook may be wishing it had not spent $249 million dollars in 2008 on a majority stake in the Middle East and India region. This allowed it to regain control of the 'Thomas Cook' name it had originally licensed to the Dubai company in 15 countries across the Middle East as reported by Travelmole.
Thomas Cook has recently announced its decision to sell its Indian operations as reported by TTG which will be an end to a huge piece of history and I hope that their precious travel archives are still in tact. Thomas Cook results as reported this week by Travel Weekly show that they are only 2 percentage points behind TUI and are only 1% down overall, thanks to an 18% increase in their independent and specialist bookings.
I was at the Business Travel and Travel Technology Shows this week and as you walked past the stands all I could hear were comments of tough trading conditions. I had a look at UK outbound trends over the past few years and was rather concerned to see that UK outbound travel had decreased for every quarter since 2008 apart from Q2 last year. Several comments I heard were “I’m afraid of which company will fail next” as one operator had already lost a huge amount with the collapse of Goldtrail leaving the Air Travel Trust with a deficit of £42.3 million in 2011.
Source: International Passenger Survey
UNWTO has been quite optimistic in forecasting between 0-5% growth in international arrivals for the Middle East region in 2012, especially when you look at the decline in 2011 shown below.
Source: UNWTO
However I had a closer look at UK resident outbound trends to the region over the past three years and travel to Morocco and Tunisia had been holding up.
Source: International Passenger Survey
The chart below shows the glimmers of hope as UAE and Israel increased their inbound UK traffic over the Q1-3 period 2011 from 2010.
Source: International Passenger Survey
What is clear is that it has been a tough twelve months for this region and we hope that stability returns to Syria.
Today’s Economist provides little hope that things will be less violent there but we can take comfort from some of the recent increases in UK travel to UAE and Israel.
Source: TTG Digital
Posted: 14/02/2012 12:35:19
The UK has endured some eye watering increases in air passenger duty (APD) but there was a mood of resignation amongst the panel at the CIMTIG event last week that it was an easy target and was not going to go away as it rises again by 10% in April 2012. The evening was expertly chaired by Richard Carrick, Chairman of Private Fly who leapt around the room managing some pretty lively debate.
The UK government has always had an issue with the UK balance of payments from travel as there is still a huge gap
(over £13 billion)[1] between outbound tourism spend which is considerably greater than spend by inbound visitors. Even the Olympics this year are unlikely to redress the balance.
It was an interesting event with the great and good of the UK travel industry speculating on what 2012 might bring and how the industry has been bearing up against everything that has been thrown at it over the last couple of years, such as tsunamis, typhoons, ash clouds, floods and strikes.
Airline winners and losers
This week was a particularly poignant one for the airline industry. There were clearly some winners and losers as Barcelona based
Spanair[2] ceased operations due to Spain’s current economic woes and
Ryanair[3] declared it was back in the black, posting a 15million euro profit for Q4 2011.
Gloom vs Enthusiasm for Olympics
You would have imagined that the UK industry would be in high spirits given the large number of events to attract our overseas visitors such as the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics. However Tom Jenkins of ETOA reckoned the Olympics “will be a blip and nothing more” and was decidedly gloomy about the games.
ETOA[4] have just done research on the Beijing and Athens Olympics hotel demand so Tom had some facts to back him up. There were some on the panel such as Hugh Taylor OBE of Michels & Taylor reminding us that we should be grateful for the avoidance of a bed tax in the UK. However no sooner had this been said and I click to the latest news to read that the EU has started to think about imposing an EU bed tax to raise more monies for the EU coffers!
Richard Tams from BA was significantly more upbeat about the Olympics and as a Tier 1 sponsor showed more unbridled enthusiasm, claiming strong inbound bookings. Discussion followed about the travel spike that you typically see in travel demand before and after major events that we saw during the last World Cup Football event. There were some on the panel such as Hugh Taylor OBE of
London beds on offer
London hoteliers now have a considerable number of extra hotel beds (120,000) to sell which have just been returned to them from the Olympics Committee[5]. From some of the stories we heard about 3 star hotels more than 6 miles from the city, trying to charge £600 per night it’s clear that some hotels have been greedy and might be left “holding the baby” if they don’t shift their prices in line with demand.
Get in at the dream stage
John Wimbleton from TUI made a good point which was also reiterated at last year’s Eye for Travel conference in Amsterdam. You have to get in at the dream stage of the customer’s travel buying cycle to be successful and those that don’t often lose out on the sale if they try and wait for the browse and book stage of the customer journey.
Delivering excellent customer service was a key theme and differentiator in John’s mind and key to repeat bookings and high average spend as he reflected on the strength of relationship between the TUI staff and those having just spent £65,000 with the company to sail around the world.
Although disposable income has shrunk for many households there are many customers who chose not to spend in 2008, perhaps feeling a tad guilty about spending too much but these customers are back spending considerable money on high value travel products. John conceded that service ruled over product and was a key differentiator. The panel agreed that you still need to invest in marketing in a downturn to stay ahead.
How optimistic are you for 2012?
Are you seeing some of the trends that the travel panel witnessed?
Are you spending more or less on marketing this year?
[2] Source: Travelmole “Thousands stranded after Spanair shuts down” 30 January 2012
[4] Source: ETOA New statistics from 2004 and 2008 Olympics and their impact on hotel demand
[5]Source: www.examiner.com “London Olympics promises additional tickets and hotel rooms” January 29, 2012
Posted: 07/02/2012 01:02:13