Global leisure and business flight bookings have surpassed pre-pandemic levels, while spending on cruise lines, buses and trains saw sharp improvements this year, according to a new report from Mastercard Economics Institute.
The new report, Travel 2022: Trends and Transitions, shows that not only have global leisure and business travel flight bookings surpassed pre-pandemic levels, and spending on cruise lines, bus trips and train travel has also recorded sharp improvements this year. The report delivers critical insights across 37 markets about the global state of travel in a post-vaccine and less restricted chapter of the pandemic era.
According to the MasterCard Economics Institute analysis, if flight booking trends continue at their current pace, an estimated 115 million more passengers in the Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa regions alone, will fly in 2022 compared with last year. The researchers analysed available travel data as well as aggregated sales activity in the MasterCard network.
Researchers found that the loosening of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in most of the world, with the exception of parts of Asia-Pacific, had recalibrated the global tourism destination map in 2022.
The US, UK, Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands are now the top destinations for tourists globally. For travellers from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the United Kingdom has been the top choice destination in the ongoing recovery, with demand exceeding that for the US.
European destinations make up most of the top ten destinations for travellers from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
