Berlin, Germany – 13 March 2017 –
Tourists are heading back to Europe, and the recovery is showing up in everything from rising hotel bookings to tax-free shopping and air traffic, leading to a brighter earnings outlook for travel and leisure companies, Reuters reported.
A rebound in emerging markets is bringing visitors from countries like China, Brazil and Russia to continental Europe, while a weaker pound since Britain voted to leave the European Union has boosted UK tourism. And despite the sagging pound, travel from the UK also remains healthy, an HSBC survey showed.
“International travel both to and from emerging markets has been growing, while average spend per trip has also been increasing. For hotels, the revenue per available room has improved in Europe and the UK,” said Jeff Meys, head of optimised portfolio strategies at NN Investment Partners.
The pan-European STOXX 600 travel and leisure sub-index , which includes hoteliers, airlines, brewers and bookmakers, is up 2 percent so far this year, after dropping 11 percent in 2016. Travel stocks have outperformed the pan-European STOXX index over the past three months.
Security fears after attacks on Paris in January and November 2015 and in Nice the following July dampened tourists’ appetite for France. That cost French hotels an estimated US$675 million in lost revenue over 2016, the research firm MKG said in January.
But France saw tourist numbers grow in the fourth quarter, figures from the national statistics agency showed, indicating a return to health.