Tourism experts believe the world will only see a strong recovery of travel and tourism in 2010, accelerating to new records in 2011 and 2012. “Our challenge is to see through the pressures of today and prepare for a different world,” said Rolf Freitag, President and CEO, IPK International in his summing up at the close of IPK’s Annual World Travel Monitor Forum held in Pisa, Italy from November 6-7, 2008. “But predicting the timing of the end of the current global economic crisis and the start of the recovery remains an even bigger challenge,” he added.
According to a TravelMole report, after four years of sustained strong growth, which continued through the month of May 2008, outbound travel demand slowed considerably from June, with growth slipping into negative figures from September 2008 in some regions. As a result, the consensus of the more than 60 tourism experts from some 30 countries around the world gathered in Pisa was that the growth in demand for international tourism – expressed in total outbound trip volume – will struggle to reach three per cent this year. |