New exploration from ForwardKeys, which has the freshest and most complete flight booking facts offered, reveals that intercontinental flights to European locations in July and August reached 39.9% of pre-pandemic levels.

This is considerably greater than very last 12 months (which was 26.6%), when the COVID-19 pandemic triggered prevalent lockdowns and vaccines were not but accredited. Having said that, the image was quite blended, with some places carrying out considerably superior than others. Also, the outlook is not increasing, as bookings slowed toward the stop of the summer period of time.

Hunting at efficiency by region, Greece was the stand-out. It realized 86% of July and August arrivals in 2019. It was followed by Cyprus, which realized 64.5%, Turkey, 62.% and Iceland, 61.8%.

Greece and Iceland were among the very first nations to make commonly publicised statements that they would accept people who experienced been completely vaccinated and/or could demonstrate a adverse PCR test and/or could clearly show evidence of recovering from COVID-19.

The international locations which fared worst ended up these which depend far more on very long-haul tourism, these types of as France and Italy and people which imposed the most onerous and volatile travel limits this sort of as the Uk, which languished at the base of the checklist, attaining just 14.3% of 2019 levels.

Excluding lower-price tag carriers, intra-European flights built up 71.4% of arrivals, as opposed with 57.1% in 2019.

The relative disappearance of lengthy-haul website visitors, who commonly continue to be for a longer period, spend additional and focus their attention on cities and sightseeing, was underlined in rankings of the greatest and worst executing nearby destinations. Travel to London was significantly disappointing it was at the base of the record of busiest European metropolitan areas, achieving just 14.2% of 2019 arrivals. That record was headed by Palma Mallorca, also a big beach resort spot, reaching 71.5% of 2019 degrees and by Athens, a gateway to quite a few islands in the Adriatic, at 70.2%. The subsequent ideal performing important cities have been Istanbul, 56.5%, Lisbon, 43.5%, Madrid, 42.4%, Paris, 31.2%, Barcelona, 31.1%, Amsterdam, 30.7% and Rome, 24.2%.

By comparison, leisure destinations proved to be significantly more resilient. A rating of all main neighborhood destinations (ie: individuals with a industry share over 1%) was dominated by classic seaside holiday getaway hotspots or the gateway to them. The leaders ended up Heraklion and Antalya, which exceeded pre-pandemic levels by 5.8% and .5% respectively. They were adopted by Thessaloniki, 98.3% Ibiza, 91.8% Larnaca, 73.7% and Palma Mallorca, 72.5%.

Aside from the macro traits, specific destinations fared somewhat superior or even worse for additional domestically certain good reasons. For case in point, Portugal, which is a favorite place of United kingdom holidaymakers, suffered when the United kingdom adjusted its designation from eco-friendly to amber in June and Spain suffered at the conclude of July when Germany warned versus all but crucial travel.

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Olivier Ponti, VP Insights, ForwardKeys commented: “When one considers how dreadful things had been for tourism in Europe past calendar year, this summer months has been a extremely modest recovery tale. Benchmarked in opposition to ordinary moments, the continued very low depth of worldwide air travel, much less than 40% of typical, has been incredibly detrimental for the aviation industry. The ongoing absence of prolonged-haul travellers, specifically from the Much East (it attained just 2.5% of pre-pandemic volumes this summer months) will confirm a intense blow to the visitor financial state of quite a few European international locations.”

He concluded: “If there is an aspect of consolation, it is men and women “staycationing”, ie: getting a holiday getaway in their own region. Although the domestic aviation has a minority share of the market in Europe in regular periods, it has held up much better in the course of the pandemic due to the fact it has not been subject matter to these kinds of hard travel restrictions. For instance, the Canaries and the Balearics welcomed extra Spanish site visitors than they do in a usual season.”