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6 Mar, 2014

FREE Download: IPK reports record global tourism in 2013, more to come in 2014

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Berlin; March 5, 2014 (IPK International media release) – Spirits were upbeat in most global tourism destinations in 2013. Great numbers of new jobs were created and figures on pending tourism investments are high. Hence, again in 2013, tourism has proven to be one of the main growth drivers in an otherwise somewhat languishing world economy.

Unfortunately, some destinations were unable to escape internal violence, political unrest and natural catastrophes. Conflicts continued to play out in Egypt; after a brief recovery, sales figures plunged again last fall. In Syria, 
the tourism industry has collapsed completely. Political unrest is surfacing in Thailand and Turkey, although not yet resulting in negative sales figures. Greece, although still unsettled, revived in 2013 and now sparkles in the glow of a double-digit tourism increase.

An ambivalent pattern is also seen for the countries of origin of interna- tional tourism. Despite ongoing national and bank debt crises, the economic situation has noticeably improved in the “advanced economies.” With few exceptions, their national products are improving again, even if only very tentatively. The “emerging economies” have once again “outperformed” in 2013. Yet such booms are not universal. On the whole, “emerging market” growth decreased from 5.6% to 4.6%. As a result, the gap between the “advanced” dynamics and those in the “emerging markets” shrunk somewhat in 2013.

All told, IPK’s World Travel Monitor® recorded a +5% increase in outbound travel to 952 million for the 2013 international travel year. The number of foreign overnight accommodations increased by 4% (7.6 billion nights) and,
at 989 billion Euro, international travel spending even rose +6%.

“Despite the sometimes very different developments in both the destina- tion countries as well as the countries of origin, all aspects of outbound travel – number of trips, overnight accommodations and spending – reached new record highs in 2013. Thus, yet again in 2013, tourism has proven to be a growth driver in the global economy,” notes Rolf Freitag, CEO of IPK International.

2014 will see a subsiding of the current ambivalence between the advan- ced and the emerging economies. Travel from the advanced economies will grow somewhat more strongly than in the previous year while the travel boom from the developing countries could slacken to some degree. Rolf Freitag adds: “We’re anticipating 8% growth in the outbound travel demand for the ‘New Economy’ countries of Asia. For Europe, we’re estimating 4% growth and for North America, 3% growth.”

FREE Download: Full summary of the analysis, along with charts

In German: IPK_Pressemitteilung_2014_de.pdf
In English: IPK_Pressrelease_2014_en.pdf