Recovery continues to build with significant week-on-week growth
Jun 4, 2020
24th June 2020: As we enter another week with easing travel restrictions, the recovery outlook remains positive across all partner segments in CarTrawler. Increased bookings are being accelerated throughout airlines, online travel agents and other travel partner segments with all segments showing positive net bookings for the last 30 days. This is due to a reduction in cancellation trends and significant increases in new bookings. As a whole, gross bookings across the business grew by +25% week on week. The key region driving this growth again was mainland Europe. Particular markets to highlight this week are Austria (+90% Vs LW) Germany (+57% Vs LW) and Spain (+42% Vs LW) with the strongest week on week growth.
When we compare our booking growth to consumer search behaviours, we can see some slight differences in terms of which segments are recovering and at what pace. It’s clear that car rental year-on-year search trends are continuing to improve at a faster pace than flight trends. Across the key markets being monitored, the average improvement week on week for car rental search terms is +7ppts vs +2ppts week on week for flight searches. Two key call outs within the car rental trends category are the US and France whose trends are back within 8% and 7% of 2019 search trends respectively.
Finally, in terms of changes to consumer booking behaviour we can see the average duration of reservations has increased when we compare to last year. This trend is centred mainly in Europe where we’re seeing a +29% increase in durations versus the same period last year. This build up in demand for holidays may be due to the fact that consumers have been forced to postpone holidays over the COVID period and are now planning longer, much needed breaks.
These are just some of the positive trends we can see as consumer trust in travel continues to build.