“Travel is still top of mind and international is bullish.” That’s the prognosis by Flight Centre Travel Group Leisure following an FCTG survey that forecasts a strong outlook for the travel industry.
Where do you stand? In FCTG Leisure’s 2023 Travel Intention customer survey, nearly nine in ten (88 per cent) respondents said they intended to holiday internationally within the next 12 months.
Proving the continuing allure of local holidays, seven in ten (72 per cent) of those polled said they planned to take more than one domestic trip in the next 12 months.
Polling some 3,000 FCTG leisure brands customers, the study also revealed that “multiple holidays are still on the agenda”, while there’s also a preference for longer stays (more than one week) for both domestic (35 per cent of respondents) and international (27 per cent) travel.
Elsewhere, it found that cruise enthusiasts were planning multiple holidays globally for both cruise (37 per cent of respondents) and land (29 per cent) vacations.
Big spenders
More than eight in ten (83 per cent) of those polled said they intended to spend the same or more on their next international trip, with a good portion (15 per cent) intending to fork out “significantly more”.
When it comes to the motivations for travelling, visiting friends and relatives topped the list (29 per cent of respondents), followed by ticking off bucket list items (21 per cent), and relaxing and recharging (24 per cent).
Meanwhile, four in ten (40 per cent) respondents admitted that loyalty programs “somewhat” influenced purchase decisions.
The findings were presented at an FCTG investor strategy session in Sydney last week, hosted by FCTG Leisure Global CEO James Kavanagh.
During the session, FCTG Leisure revealed that its core global leisure brands boasted a total customer base of 28 million, with Flight Centre clients accounting for more than half (15 million) of all clients.
Flight Centre Global Managing Director Andrew Stark recently called the boom in travel advisor business the “Renaissance of the travel agent”. In this exclusive chat with Karryon, the Flight Centre MD talked about what’s next for FC agents.
Also, read our in-depth interview with FCTG Global Leisure CEO James Kavanagh.
And check out our preview (or at least everything we know so far) of FCTG’s Flichella 2023 music festival.
