bgb UK Market Insight Report

Posted by Debbie Hindle on 8 November 2010 | 0 Comments

During World Travel Market we launched our annual UK Market Insight Report. This is intended to be a useful and concise snapshot for issues facing travel marketeers in the year ahead and full copies are available - simply email my colleague Robin Mack on rmack@bgb.co.uk. Here are a few extracts we hope may be useful.

UK economy - predictions are GDP growth of 2% but a weaker increase in consumer spending of 1.5%. UK residents' travel abroad declined by 9 per cent in the 12 months ending August 2010 according to the Office for National Statistics. Only 55.8 million visits were taken compared to 61.3 million in the prior twelve months.

Social trends - the average childbearing age for women is now 29.4  - the highest since records began. Pre-family target audiences for travel organisations can therefore be up to 40 years old.

50 year olds are no longer the cash-rich, time-rich age group but more likely to have teenagers or even "boomerang" children in tow - young adults who can't afford to leave home after graduating.

Destination trends Kuoni's top ten for 2010 is 1) Maldives, 2) Thailand 3) America 4) Sri Lanka (up one) 5) Egypt (down one) 6) Malaysia (up 3), 7) UAE (new in top ten), 8 China and Hongkong, 9) Switzerland (new in ranking) 10) Singapore (down three)

Online and Social media trends Facebook members have grown from 350 million to 500 million this year alone. In 2010 Twitter users grew from 58 million to 175 million, LinkedIn members grew from from 70 to 80 million and Foursquare users from 1 million to 4 million. Some travel companies are now asking if Facebook will generate more search traffic to websites than Google in the future.

• del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• reddit
• StumbleUpon
• Twitter

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