Strong Growth for Luxury Travel, Report says

Most popular luxury travel destinations in Europe: Germany & Italy
Most luxury travellers come from the USA & China

Luxury travel is booming: high-price trips are the strongest-growing market segment worldwide, according to ITB Berlin and IPK International.

Following a special evaluation of the World Travel Monitor, which is conducted by IPK International and commissioned by ITB Berlin, it was revealed on Tuesday that luxury travel has grown by 48 percent in the last five years, twice as fast as all other types of foreign trips, which grew by 24 percent.

The World Travel Monitor is based on the findings of representative interviews carried out every year with more than 500,000 people in over 60 travel markets worldwide.

For the analysis, luxury trips were defined as all short trips with spending of more than 750 euros per night and all long trips costing more than 500 euros per night.

In 2014, the world population undertook 46 million international luxury trips. The market share of these trips rose from 3.9 percent in 2009 to 4.6 percent in 2014.

According to the analysis, a total of 172 billion euros was spent on international luxury travel last year. This means that for foreign travel every eighth euro was spent on luxury products.

More than 1,000 euros per night was spent by luxury travellers from the United Arab Emirates, India, Kuwait, Brazil, Australia, Canada and China (in descending order).

The largest source markets for luxury travel are the USA, with 9.2 million foreign luxury trips, and China, with 6.9 million. Other major source markets are Japan, Canada and Australia.

In Europe, most luxury trips are undertaken by the British, with 1.5 million, ahead of the French and the Germans. The largest growth rate was in the number of luxury trips undertaken by the Chinese, followed by the USA, Canada, Taiwan, Korea and the UAE. Russia also showed strong growth until 2013 but the figures declined last year. The luxury travel markets in Japan (-20 per cent), Mexico and Scandinavia also dropped back.

The most popular luxury travel destination by far was the USA, with 6.2 million trips, ahead of China and Mexico. In Europe, Italy and Germany share first place with 2.2 million luxury travel visitors each, ahead of France and Great Britain.

Holidays abroad represent the dominant share of all luxury trips with 74 percent. The most popular types of luxury holidays are tours, with 29 percent, followed by city trips, beach holidays and cruises. The remaining 26 percent of luxury trips are on business, with Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Events (MICE) as the travel purpose for most of these trips.

For luxury travel planning the Internet is used far more than on average. But only for information purposes. Half of all luxury travellers book their holiday through a travel agent, which is a much higher share than for other travellers.