The latest edition of the Pulse Report, which tracks data for the month of April, indicates continued signs of optimism across both the Americas and in Europe.
NB: This is an article from Duetto
The data is showing healthy activity in terms of web traffic, pace and pick up, but there is still a way to go before a full bounce back.
Lloyd Biddle, Duetto’s Director of Enterprise Solutions, commented: “In the Americas, Latin America on-the-books rooms are 43% ahead of the prior year at a +13% higher average daily rate. US pace remains off-the-charts over the Memorial Day to Labor Day period – 101 days of summer – with new bookings up 81% compared to last month’s 150% month-over-month increase.
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“The big story in the EMEA region is consumer search behavior for the May to September travel season jumped another 53% month-over-month after posting a 88% jump last month. That signals a lot of pent-up demand to travel.
Pick up
As the vaccination campaigns continue successfully across many European countries and the number of COVID infections, in general, begin to decrease, the trend of positivity we reported last month has continued. Although the situation varies from country to country, as a whole EMEA experienced an increase in net new bookings of 196%, 2,928%, 70% and 24% for April, May, June and July respectively compared to March 2021 data, showing clear signs of short-term recovery.
Iberia and the rest of Southern Europe are faring particularly well in terms of net new bookings as summer approaches and the appetite for travel rises. Compared to March 2021, these markets experienced a positive increase in net bookings all the way until September, with Iberia reporting increases during April of 449%, 248%, and 203% for April, May, and June stay months respectively.
Looking at the Americas, as we look at net new bookings made in April 2021 for stays across North America compared to bookings made in prior months, we see a continued trend of generally good news as the number of new bookings continues to grow month after month. It’s important to note, however, that the rate of growth from March to April slowed compared to the prior month’s growth between February and March.
Latin America as a whole continues to show volatility in terms of net new bookings. While not as high as the increase observed last month (110%), in May we do see another strong increase for bookings across the region (52%).
Web Traffic
Web activity continues to be fairly healthy across most regions this month, as the appetite to travel is clearly strong. In Europe, hotel web searches continue to grow for the entire region, with increases in searches for stay months May through to September rising by 48%.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, as summer approaches the two regions leading the overall total volume of searches are Iberia and the rest of Southern Europe with 48% and 87% respectively.
For North America, web traffic for May grew by another 20% month-on-month and for June by 100%. July and all the months following, however, still have a long way to go. In Latin America, web traffic into the region continues to show positive momentum. While the rate of month-on-month growth has slowed since the last Pulse Report (last month we reported a triple digit percentage increase when we compared searches made in March 2021 to February 2021), this month we again see growth on top of the prior month’s totals with May up another 7%, June +11%, July +16%, and August +19%.
On The Books
Continuing with Latin America, in terms of pace there is cause for a little excitement this month. Last month we reported that June and July 2021 were pacing ahead in comparison to 2019, which was the first time we saw a region pacing ahead of a pre-pandemic period. April data shows even more improvement with June 2021 now pacing ahead of June 2019 by 9% and July by 5%. This early data further backs up the suggestion that summer 2021 has the potential for LATAM to outperform summer 2019.
Meanwhile, pace for North America continues to increase as a result of the strong growth in net new bookings, particularly for the summer months and in Europe, comparing April 2021 against April 2019, the EMEA region as a whole sits at -79% for April and May, -72% for June and -59% for July.
