But, Venice aside, the current key to whether or not world tourism keeps on growing is not so much the amount of accommodation available. Generally-speaking, there are enough hotels, apartments, villas, Air BNBs and holiday cottages in the world to absorb the rising demand in the shorter term. And even where accommodation is tight, it seems we are not deterred and are willing to be more flexible in our plans to get around the problem. Nick Longman, CEO of Audley Travel, which specialises in tailor-made long haul itineraries told me the other week, that where there is pressure on availability during high season, more and more of his clients are amenable to book off-season or shoulder season instead.
What really makes a difference to the potential for travel to expand is the availability of airline seats. And all signs are that, as far as UK and European airlines are concerned, there will be significant growth next year. Many had already announced expanded programmes for 2024 and several have recently added to that.
Last week, Steve Heapy, CEO of Jet2.com and Jet2holidays, said that it was already expanding its summer 2024 programme, by adding 70,000 extra seats to destinations in Mainland Spain, the Canaries, the Balearics, Portugal, Turkey, Croatia, and Greece from eight UK airports. This was provoked by seeing “strong and sustained demand” for summer ’24, with the late summer season proving particularly popular. The week before, easyJet had also announced 12 new routes from eight UK airports to service its summer 2024 programme.
The only fly in the ointment seems to be whether or not the airlines can get hold of enough planes to meet the demand. Ryanair said in September that it was suffering delays in the delivery of some of the 57 new aircraft it currently has on order from Boeing, though it still hopes to resolve the issue in time for the peak summer programme in 2024.
So, for better or worse, it looks as though more of the world will be going places next year than ever before.