Four out of ten senior travel professionals expect their 2022 booking volumes to match, or even exceed, 2019 levels.
This was highlighted in the WTM Industry Report research, revealed at World Travel Market (WTM) London, November 1-3 at ExCeL, following a survey of almost 700 senior professionals from around globe.
Of the respondents, 26% were confident that industry bookings for 2022 would be comparable with 2019, with a further 14% expecting 2022 to outperform the last ‘normal year’ 2019, before the outbreak of COVID-19 early in 2020.
This upbeat outlook was in terms of not only the wider industry but also their own businesses. 28% of travel industry professionals expected their bookings to match 2019, with 16% anticipating an increase.
However, not everyone is expecting a recovery in 2022. Almost half of the individual business owners expected 2022 to be a struggle, with 42% admitting that bookings were unlikely to match 2019. A further 14% were not sure how 2022 would pan out.
Simon Press, Exhibition Director, WTM London, said: “It is great to see such optimism from the global travel industry as it looks to recover from the impact of COVID-19.”
He noted that there had been a strong industry turnout at WTM this week to agree business deals that would shape the future of the global travel and tourism industry.
The first day of the show (Monday, November 1) welcomed exhibitors from more than 100 countries and regions, with over 6 000 pre-registered buyers from 142 countries.
Press spoke out over the British traffic-light system, saying: “The traffic-light system was intended as a simplified version of 2020’s travel corridor system, but in reality, turned out to be just as complicated, perhaps more so.
“Airlines, operators and destinations were constantly dismayed at the lack of countries on the green list and had to act quickly when countries moved up or down the traffic-light grades, often at short notice.”
