ForwardKeys has quickly established themselves as a force in predictive travel data analysis and their latest new research pieces covering Russia, Asia Pacific, and Global Travel make for interesting reading.

You can read the full reports on their website; below we redact and present highlights from their report on Europe and APAC Travel Trends.

Extra flight routes and more capacity for 2018

The United States experienced it in 2016, Australia a year later. Now it’s Europe’s turn to see a boom in capacity on flights from China, according to the latest figures from ForwardKeys, which predicts future travel patterns by analysing 17 million booking transactions a day.

A total of nine new routes and one resumed route will start during the first half of 2018, and a further three are in the pipeline. At least four China-Europe routes are already planned for the second half of this year.

Finland is benefiting from Finnair’s strong Asia strategy, while Spain, the UK and Ireland are seeing a mix of increased tourism alongside healthy Chinese business investment.

ForwardKeys’ statistics show that by June there will be an extra 30 flights a week from China to Europe. Based on an estimation of 200 seats per flight, that means 6,000 more seats will be available for Europe-bound Chinese travellers. Excluding Russia, the average total number of seats available each week last summer was 150,000.

Europe, with a 10% market share of the outbound Chinese market, saw a 7.7% increase in Chinese travellers during the recent New Year holiday period in January and February this year, according to ForwardKeys’ findings. Turkey – recovering after terrorist attacks – increased by 108.4%, and Greece by 55.7%, compared to the same period last year.

Travel in the opposite direction is set to increase too. At the present time, flight bookings to China, in the coming six months, from the rest of the world, are 11.8% ahead of where they were at this time last year. The stand-out origin region is the Americas, which is responsible for 25% of travel to China. Bookings from there are currently 24.0% ahead.

ForwardKeys CEO and co-founder, Olivier Jager, said: “It seems that the EU-China Tourism Year is having a positive impact on travel in both directions. The Chinese have been growing in confidence for international travel for some time now and that trend is being reciprocated.

“Europe clearly has a lot to gain from this increased capacity because the Chinese are ready to spend money on luxury goods while on holiday, providing good opportunities for European retailers.”