Nearly all of the world’s major travel regions are currently outpacing their prior year hotel bookings, indicating a very healthy outlook for the hotel industry and tourism in general, according to wholesale travel brokerage company Tourico Holidays. For its annual report, the firm examined the hotel booking data from nearly 80,000 hotel properties located on more than 4,500 destinations around the world – and compared it to booking data captured at the same time last year, revealing where traveler interests have shifted.
One of this year's survey's most interesting findings is the total number of hotel room nights booked has increased significantly, growing 28.7 percent around the globe.
As a source market, North America has increased its hotel room nights booked for 2017 by 28 percent year-over-year compared to this time in 2016.
The EU, as a source, has increased its room nights by 28 percent year-over-year, LATAM has increased its room nights booked by 43 percent year-over-year, and Asia-Pacific has increased its room nights booked by 23 percent year-over-year.
“It’s still early, but it’s extremely encouraging to see that booked hotel room nights for 2017 are already significantly outpacing 2016,” said Lauren Volcheff Atlass, the Executive Vice President of Global Sales at Tourico Holidays. “Even despite attempts to frighten people away from traveling, the industry is not only surviving, but thriving – and the hotel sector in particular, continues to grow.”
Strong regional outlooks for 2017 are being buoyed by major tourist countries throughout the world.
Room nights booked in the United States have increased by 26 percent year-over-year.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s booked room nights for 2017 have increased by 38 percent year-over-year.
China has increased its booked room nights by 52 percent year-over-year. Others, including Canada (+55% YoY), Mexico (+37% YoY), Brazil (+31% YoY), UAE (+65% YoY), Thailand (+29% YoY), Australia (+10% YoY), and Sweden (+112% YoY) have also seen significant growth in hotel room nights booked for 2017.
