New research reveals this capital city is the most-booked destination in Europe

This time this past year, as the summer holidays was beginning to fully activate, flight bookings to London outnumbered those to other cities in Europe.

But new exploration into flight booking info from the first two weeks of June, conducted by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and ForwardKeys, shows how considerably the travel scenery has changed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lisbon, which loitered in number nine found in the list of the 10 most-booked European cities found in the first two weeks of June 2019, features surged to the top of the list found in 2020, followed by Paris and Amsterdam. London is now in the bottom, behind Vienna and Barcelona.

This fall from grace may be the consequence of the travel restrictions and quarantine rules imposed by the united kingdom government. While Europe possesses begun to relax travelling restrictions and bookings have begun to pick up, those for London have languished, says ForwardKeys, a specialist in travel industry styles and business intelligence.

Demand for flights to and from Europe has started to recover, thanks partly to a rest of travel restrictions

According to the analysis, new tickets issued pertaining to future international travel to europe (EU) dropped by 84.4 % in the first half of June when compared to same period in 2019, recovering from a 94.5 per cent overall decline in-may. Meanwhile, bookings to the united kingdom plunged by 96.7 % in the first half of June, practically unchanged from the 97.2 per cent collapse in May.

Lisbon, meanwhile, has soared to the very best of the list of most-booked European places during the first 1 / 2 of June. Portugal offers been among the first countries to establish enhanced hygiene and safeness protocols to welcome tourists and has one of the top testing rates to control transmission.

"Travel limitations and quarantines possess continued to quash flights and strangle demand for travel to and from London, causing it to fall to underneath of the league for top ten many booked European metropolitan areas, according to latest air travel bookings. However, evaluation by ForwardKeys clearly displays demand for flights to and from Europe provides begun to recuperate, thanks partly to a leisure of travel limitations which includes fuelled the restoration in the travelling and tourism sector," says Gloria Guevara, WTTC president and leader.

“The implementation of global protocols together with testing and contact tracing for intercontinental arrivals, as unveiled by WTTC’s Safe and sound and Seamless Traveller Voyage initiative, will restore consumer confidence and motivate going to resume,” she adds.

“We believe these procedures will enable travellers to meet the huge pent up demand to travelling once more and revel in a much-need summer time break while enabling the travelling and tourism sector to re-open for business, restoring the livelihoods of millions of folks dependent upon tourism.”