June news

The demand for travel to New Zealand and Australia is still very strong with the main barrier to sales being the present cost of flights as these have doubled in costs since pre-Covid times.  I do expect the rates to drop a bit for 2025/26 as more lower brand carriers come into play and capacity grows but the rate drop will not be large and will then grow again in the future.  That might not seem like good news, but customers are just accepting the increase in airfares globally as the new reality and new customers are unaware that rates used to be much lower 5 years ago.

The end result of this is predominantly lower arrival numbers to New Zealand and Australia but higher revenue spent on the holiday.  This is likely to reduce the length of stay and dispersal for visitors and in the long term will obviously reduce repeat customers so we will see a long-term reduction in arrivals.  Tourism Australia report that repeat customers are 63% of arrivals which is nice to hear but does mean that first time arrivals are down from 45% to 37% and less first time arrivals means less repeat customers later.

FTI Touristik in Germany going into liquidation has shown that troubles in the travel industry are not all over yet and anyone can get into financial difficulty. 

All key decision makers are now back from Trenz/ATE and they are like magpies looking for something new and shiny for their websites/brochures as they build up to the key booking period later this year.