Article from BTNews 1 JULY 2019
US heads Top 10 destinations
With the summer travel season looming, analysis by industry commerce platform Travelport released last week named China the fastest growing Top 10 long-haul destination for British travellers, jumping from 11th place to seventh in the past year.
The survey of global flight bookings also found the US remains the hottest long-haul summer destination, with more advanced bookings than the rest of the five most popular long-haul destinations combined.
As of 14 June, more than 300,000 advanced bookings had been made in the UK through all global distribution systems (GDS) for return flights to the US scheduled between Friday 28 June and Sunday 8 September.
Flight bookings to second-placed India stood at 86,978 while the third most popular long-haul destination, the UAE, registered 78,761 bookings. China’s performance came from an increase of 3,402 (13%) in bookings year-on-year.
Travelport vice-president and managing director for Northern Europe Paul Broughton said: “Sunshine, family attractions, natural landmarks and affordable flights make the US an ever-popular choice for UK travellers over the summer.
“It was also interesting to see China become a Top 10 long-haul summer destination this year, after a 2018 study named it as the top bucket-list travel destination for one in four people in the UK.”
OUR READERS' FINEST WORDS (All times and dates are GMT)
All comments are filtered to exclude any excesses but the Editor does not have to agree with what is being said. 100 words maximum