Duetto Pulse: ‘Real optimism’ seen in Europe as vaccination roll out gathers pace

Clear signs of short-term recovery of hotel bookings found in latest tracker

The latest edition of the Duetto Pulse Report, which tracks hotel performance data for April 2021, shows real cause for optimism when it comes to booking activity and web traffic across Europe over the last month.

Vaccination programmes continue to accelerate across the continent, and with new COVID cases generally decreasing and restrictions beginning to ease, we are seeing the positive trends highlighted in the last Pulse Report being accentuated.

In terms of pick up, although the situation is generally improving, it varies greatly from country to country. However, as a whole, there are clear signs of a short-term recovery, with increases in net new bookings of 196%, 2,928%, 70% and 24% for April, May, June and July respectively, compared to March 2021 figures.

In the UK, thanks to the high percentage of the population now vaccinated and the imminent reopening of most hotels, there’s been a very positive increase in bookings compared to the previous Pulse Report with April, May and June seeing increases of 160%, 134% and 45% respectively, compared to March 2021 data.

The DACH region, which is generally still under stricter restrictions, also saw a positive increase but solely concentrated in the short-term with April and May seeing 162% and 63% increases in net bookings respectively.

In terms of web traffic, hotel web searches continue to grow for the entire region. For the period of May to September, web shopping was up in April 2021 by 48%. Currently, Iberia and the rest of Southern Europe are ahead in terms of the overall total volume of searches with 48% and 87% respectively. However, the UK and DACH have also experienced a positive increase, although more moderate, with 39% and 36% rises respectively.

Lloyd Biddle, Duetto director of enterprise solutions, said: “The big story in the EMEA region is consumer search behaviour for the May to September travel season jumped another 53% month-over-month after posting an 88% jump last month. That signals a lot of pent up demand to travel.”

The Duetto Pulse Report is a monthly report available for free to hoteliers from around the world. It tracks key metrics for North America, Latin America, EMEA and APAC. Subscribe here: https://www.duettocloud.com/pulse-signup