Flight Bookings Down More Than a Fifth Due to Catalonia Crisis

Flights to Catalonia have already taken a hit of more than 20 per cent because of the current instability in the region, according to a leading flights analyst

ForwardKeys, which helps forecast future travel by analysing around 17 million flight booking transactions a day, international air reservations for Catalonia have fallen 22 per cent since the beginning of October, benchmarked against the equivalent dates last year.

Olivier Jager, CEO, ForwardKeys said: “Domestic political unrest almost always deters visitors and that is what we are seeing now – a 22 per cent collapse in international flight bookings for Catalonia. This will also have a knock-on to other parts of Spain because many visitors arriving in Catalonia will travel around the country. If the political crisis worsens, I fear we will see a further decline in bookings. This trend will be of great concern because Travel & Tourism represents such a large proportion of the Spanish economy, over 14 per cent of GDP.

The company analyses more than 17m flight booking transactions a day, drawing data from all the major global air reservation systems and selected airlines and tour operators. This information is enhanced with further independent data sets, including flight search and official government statistics, plus data science to paint a picture of who is travelling where and when.

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