Following the bomb blast in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet on January 11, killing 10 German tourists, flight bookings to Istanbul dropped sharply, according to the latest data from ForwardKeys, which monitors future travel patterns by analyzing some 14 million reservation transactions each day.
The analysis shows a 32% fall in net daily international bookings compared with the same period last year.
Olivier Jager, Co-founder and CEO of ForwardKeys said: “As our data shows, there was an immediate reaction to the bombing with people deciding to stay away from Istanbul. Whilst the impact has been negative and noticeable, this terroirs incident has not affected Istanbul as badly as the November 13th attacks affected Paris.”
He continued: “People visiting friends and family (VFR) and the business sector (whose travel is characterised by shorter stays, shorter notice and individual rather than group bookings) appear to have been less deterred than those travelling as tourists.”
The majority of those killed in the bomb attack were German and the ForwardKeys data shows that the origin market most significantly affected was Germany, with net bookings 39% down the week after the bomb.
This was due in equal measure to some people who had made bookings cancelling and others who would have booked not booking.
No signs of recovery
Looking ahead, the booking situation to Istanbul is not encouraging. Olivier Jager said: “All the top source markets continue to be down compared with the previous year. The one exception is Ukraine but that is due to a prior slump in demand. Our data shows that, so far, booking trends are not showing any signs of significant recovery.”
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