What will be talking about this time next year? One exciting development is sure to be the first commercial flight of the Airbus A380, which will open a new chapter in aviation history. For the first time ever, an aircraft will take to the skies carrying over 550 passengers, and Singapore Airlines and Emirates will be the first customers. From 2008, the Boeing 787, the dubbed will also be in operation. Both Airbus and Boeing are already both claiming unrivalled comfort for passengers. But the verdict on this will probably have to wait for 2007’s ITB Daily!
- China’s latest five-year plan calls for a massive growth in airline traffic – with 100 new aircraft to be ordered and 1,000 new pilots to be recruited every year between now and 2010. This will double the size of China’s aviation industry, and make it the second largest in the world after the USA.
- As every year, Rolf Freitag from IPK International presented delegates at the ITB Convention with a comprehensive and precise insight into the performance of travel and tourism worldwide. The following is a summary of trends for 2005.
- Global: overnight volume: 5.7 billion, up 4%; spending EUR750 billion, up 7%.
- Europe outbound travel: 370 million trips, up 4%; 3.5 billion overnights, up 2%; EUR330 billion in spending, up 5%.
- Germany outbound travel: Domestic: 206 million trips, up 3%; spending EUR56 billion, overnights 736 million. International: 76 million trips, up 2%, overnights 676 million, spending EUR64 billion.
- IPK’s forecast for world outbound travel this year – based on a number of scenarios, one of which being that avian flu will not affect travel – is that there will be an overall 3-4% growth.
- In contrast, John Koldowski, head of Strategic Intelligence at the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), said at the ITB Convention that he believes there could be a significant fall-out for tourism if the H5N1 virus were to mutate into a human influenza virus. And, given trends over the past few years – ie there is always something that is unpredictable.
- Koldowski believes that tourism will continue to be affected by other factors outside our control.
- At the same time, Koldowski gave a comprehensive wrap-up of the situation in Asia Pacific and provided some forecasts for this year. For 2004-08, PATA is expecting an average annual growth rate of 10.6% for South Asia, 8.1% for Southeast Asia, 6.9% Northeast Asia, and 5.7% for all of Asia Pacific.
