Update of Monthly Tourism Indicators 19 February 2010

Overview According to our latest estimates, international tourist arrivals contracted by 5.6% worldwide in 2009 – worse than our January forecast of -4.6%. The downward revision was mainly driven by new worse-than-expected European data. We now estimate that arrivals declined by 8% in Europe last year, making it the worst performing region by a fairly significant margin despite the disproportionate impact of the A(H1N1) influenza pandemic on the Americas. Airline passenger traffic continued to rebound strongly with year-on-year growth reaching 4.5% in the month of December. Tentative signs of improvement were visible in Europe and North America, but emerging markets continued to be the main driver of the recovery. Nevertheless, it is clear from Balance of Payments data that the arrivals trend masks a much deeper fall in tourism receipts – an indication of widespread tourist retrenchment in the face of heightened economic uncertainty.

Despite recovery in H2, decline in arrivals was worse than expected…

…with mature markets suffering disproportionately D:\WTTC\2009\data\tourism\patadata.xls

Airline passenger traffic growth continues to rebound strongly… D:\WTTC\2009\data\tourism\stindicators.xls

…driven largely by improvements in emerging markets… D:\WTTC\2009\data\tourism\stindicators.xls

…but arrivals figures conceal a deeper retrenchment in spending

All key countries now have 2009 data D:\WTTC\2009\data\tourism\patadata.xls