Latest weekly TravelgateX booking insights point to lift off for peaks

The latest seven-day trends from the API distribution marketplace based on analysis of 30,000 daily bookings and three billion searches facilitated by its platform

The latest weekly trends analysis from digital travel marketplace TravelgateX has indicated the traditional north European peak summer holiday selling period is underway.

The API distribution specialist has developed a free dashboard that tracks an average of 30,000 daily bookings and three billion searches facilitated by TravelGateX’s distribution platform.

Today’s latest weekly update revealed that the UK was behind only the US in source market bookings with just over 16% of share.

Both the top two source market saw their overall share of bookings made in the seven days drop, the US by 10 percentage points and the UK just marginally by 1.34 percentage points.

Europe’s biggest outbound market, Germany, saw less volume, with just 3.2% of share, but like the UK, it over-indexed for lead-in times for departure dates three months or more away.

Just over 45% of bookings make in the UK in the last seven days were for travel 90 days or more out, and 37% in the German market.

In the US, which had 29% share overall, nearly a third (29.8%) of bookings were last minute (0-1 day before departure) and just 10% for at least three months before departure.

In other major European markets like Spain, France, Italy and Portugal the longest lead-in time accounted for between 18% and 28% of bookings.

In Britain, two-thirds of bookings (65.4%) were made by couples, 8.7% by families, 14.1% by groups  and 10.7% by solo travellers.

Of all the markets Britain had the highest share of family bookings (22.71%) ahead of Spain, the US and France.

The dominance of couples kept the average hotel stay for UK bookers low at two to five nights. Just over two-third of families (67%) booked longer stays of between six and 14 nights.

The US topped the chart for most booked country, with New York well out in front on 44% followed by Nevada (14%), Florida (11%), California (10%).

Spain was the second most-booked country. Although the Canary Island saw an eight percentage points week-on-week share fall, it remained well out on top with just under 40% of all bookings.

Average Daily Rates (price per room per night) for UK bookings to March are lagging 2022 levels by an average of €40 but are more in line with last year’s levels for arrivals between March and June.

There is greater weekly fluctuation in ADRs for family bookings but the pattern is broadly similar while rates for couples vary between around €130 and €200 and are more closely aligned to 2022.

Annual UK booking data for January in the years 2018 to 2023 reveals that the market has recovered its COVID losses of 2020 and 2021, with ADR’s this year already up 21% and room nights up 33%.