Published on : Wednesday, February 6, 2013
World travel was hit by a diverse mix of bad news and events in 2012 including severe weather around the world, political conflicts, the depressed global economy and soaring energy prices, Rolf Freitag, said CEO of IPK International. But emerging markets continued to provide good news with rising salaries and upward mobility combining to generate growing tourism demand, he stressed.
Overall, international trips are expected to show 4% growth this year but overnight stays will only increase 2%, reflecting the continuing trend to shorter trips, the World Travel Monitor results showed.
In contrast, global travel spending grew healthily by 7% to €875 billion, resulting in a 3% increase in spending per trip and a 5% rise in average spending per night (due to shorter average trips). Asians, South Americans and North Americans spend the most per trip, partly due to higher flight costs, while European spending is lower on average.
The USA remains the world’s top destination for international travel with 56 million visitors, ahead of Spain (51m) and Germany (48m), according to the international tourism experts at IPK. The other top 10 destinations in 2011 were France, Italy, China, the UK, Austria, Mexico and Turkey.
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