The Association of Belgian Travel Organisers (ABTO) periodically sends out updates regarding travel and travel booking trends in Belgium. For the period of May to July 2024, the association saw a drop of last-minute bookings, TravMagazine reports. Also, the cost of travel has risen.

Nevertheless, the third quarter still recorded an increase compared to the same period last year. 

Some key findings are:

Fewer last-minute bookings in the summer

While June and July are usually very popular for last-minute bookings, travel organisers notices a sharp drop. From October 2023 to July 2024 Belgium endured a particularly grey, whet, consistent underwhelming and demotivating weather pattern.

Despite the bad weather in Belgium, last-minute bookings fell sharply, with a drop of 17% in the third quarter. July in particular suffered a major blow, with a decrease of 33%. Package holiday flights also suffered, with a decline of no less than 48%.

Delayed growth in total number of bookings

Despite the disappointing last-minute bookings, the number of bookings will continue to grow in 2024. Up to the end of July, 4.3 million trips were booked, which represents an increase of 6% compared to the same period in 2023. 

However, the growth in bookings is at a lower level compared to the second quarter. At that time, growth of 13.7% was recorded. At the end of July, with a final quarter still in sight, this year already recorded 94% of the total number of bookings for 2023.

More organised trips

On the other hand, it is good news for the organised travel sector. The share of organized holidays continues to grow at the expense of self-organized trips. This share increased by 6%, a trend that was already apparent earlier in the year.

Why that is? Not sure. Maybe people are less motivated to do their research themselves. It would be interesting to see statistics of people using artificial intelligence (AI) to organise their trip. We certainly do.

Flights and cruises

Flight holidays also continue to gain popularity: their share rose from 15.9% to 17.7%. 

Cruises, a sector that had been in the background in recent years, saw their market share almost double, from 1.4% to 2.2% percent.

Less online, more personal service

In line with the growth in the share of organised travel, the share of online bookings fell. 

While the pandemic caused an explosion in online travel requests, the trend now seems to be reversed. More and more Belgians are opting for personal contact and prefer to book their trip face-to-face, for example in a brick-and-mortar travel agency. 

Major platforms such as Booking.com and Airbnb are noticing that enthusiasm for purely online booking is declining.

Spending more

The Belgians are clearly spending more on their holidays. On average, expenditure per person has increased by 21% compared to the same period last year. 

In the second quarter, the increase was even slightly higher, namely 24%. It is striking that this increase is less strong for flight holidays: there the increase was limited to 14%.

Going for sequels

An interesting fact is the loyalty of Belgian travellers to their holiday destinations. No less than 69% of vacationers returned in 2024 to a destination they had already visited in the past two years. 

This underlines the familiarity and satisfaction with popular destinations such as Spain, France and Italy.

GfK

The above results are based on a representative sample of 650 Belgian citizens aged 18 and over, from a panel of 35,000 contacts that was put together by the originally German market research institute GfK.

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