Hawai’i Tourism Europe Newsletter March 2015 Send us your product news! Please feel free to keep us posted on any news and updates regarding your product in 2015 which may be of interest to the European market and we are happy to include it in our quarterly newsletter to the European trade partners and consumers. The next issue will be sent out on June 15, 2015!

Market Trends & Travel Trade News UK Travel news roundup: 1 Summer bookings finally take off All signs point to an upturn in summer sales in the second half of January, following a tough start to the month. Industry analyst GfK reported a 4% year-on-year rise in bookings in the week to January 31, following a 2% increase the preceding week. That followed a 1% yearon-year decline in the week to January 17 and 4% shortfall in the week to January 10. GfK reported summer 2015 package bookings up 4% last week, with all-inclusive sales 8% ahead and family bookings up 9%. Bookings for holidays of between eight and 13 nights also showed sharp growth (up 8%), as did long-haul bookings (up 8%) and short-haul (up 6%). The average selling price for summer 2015 remained £7 up year on year at the end of the month, with season-to-date sales up at least 2%. The current winter season was 5% down overall. But year-on-year bookings in the week to January 24 were 4% up, with average prices down. Agents confirmed the improving picture – and some posted records. Travel Counsellors reported sales of £2.82 million on January 16 – its best-ever day – and said the month as a whole was 7% up on 2014. Sales director Malcolm Hingley suggested several reasons, including “work travel counsellors put into relationships with customers who booked last January”. Hays Travel owner John Hays said: “We are up year on year. We have been busy at weekends, but there have been troughs midweek. The highs have been really high and the troughs lower than normal. But we have had a fantastic month in foreign exchange.” John Sullivan, commercial head at Advantage Travel Partnership, reported “a marked improvement” last weekend, as many people received their first salary payment of the year. But he said: “It wasn’t a stampede. The mass market has been underperforming. But we are doing well in long-haul, luxury, tailor-made and cruises.” 1

www.travelweekly.co.uk, www.traveldailymedia.com

He suggested the falling cost of oil may have led some consumers to hold off booking in the hope prices will drop. Germany Travel news roundup: 2 Sales pick up in January Prospects for the German outbound market are now looking better for this year after travel agency bookings picked up by 3.5% last month following weak sales at the start of January. The mood among German tour operators and travel agents has definitely improved following the latest monthly survey results from market researchers GfK and IT services firm TATS. Some managers had been worried by very slow sales in the first fortnight of January, which is traditionally a strong booking period. But better sales in the second half of the month have improved the picture. Overall travel agency sales grew by 3.5% last month, including a 4.1% rise in bookings for the summer, according to GfK’s monthly survey of some 1,200 holiday-focused travel agencies. These are solid growth figures given that January 2014 was a strong sales month. This follows a 3.7% rise in December sales, including a strong 5.8% rise in bookings for May to October 2015. The cumulated growth rate for summer 2015, covering bookings since last autumn, now lies at 5.4%, according to GfK. In terms of summer booking trends, there was strong demand last month for departures in June, which helped to reduce the cumulative fall to 7.7% from 11% at the end of December. May is now 21.1% ahead of last year, mostly due to the Whitsun holiday being in May rather than June this year. There was also good demand for August holidays. DRV predicts German market growth in 2015 The German tourism market is set for further good growth this year after a solid start to summer holiday bookings, the German Travel Association (DRV) said today (Thursday) ahead of next week’s ITB Berlin. Bookings for summer 2015 holidays in German travel agencies have increased by about 5% as of end-January, according to market researcher GfK. “We expect further growth at a high level for the whole tourism year,” said an optimistic Norbert Fiebig, DRV president, at a press conference in Berlin. He declined to give an exact forecast, however, due to “many uncertainties”. Trends for different destinations vary widely, however. Egypt is selling strongly with a 40% increase at present, according to the association. Greece (+10%), Majorca (+4%) and cruises are also all selling well. In contrast, bookings are down for the Canary Islands, Turkey, domestic holidays in Germany and overland destinations in neighbouring countries. 2

www.fvw.com

The current exchange rate and price trends are benefiting tour operators who already contracted capacity at attractive rates, the DRV emphasised. Consumers who now book their travel individually will have to pay significantly more, especially for trips to the Caribbean and Switzerland, it pointed out. Looking back at the 2013/14 year ending last October, the DRV said that the German tourism market once again hit new record levels. Tour operators increased their combined revenues by nearly 4% to €26.3 billion, which was about €1 billion more revenues than in 2012/13. This final figure is significantly higher than the 2% growth forecast made last December. Growth was driven by cruises and demand for higher-value and higher-priced holidays. The number of customers increased by 2.5%, meaning that there was a rise in average prices. German travel agents specialising in tourism generated sales growth of about 3% last year while there was a 1-2% sales increase for agencies that also sell airline tickets and rail tickets. Business travel agencies managed to increase sales by about 1%. In overall terms, the entire travel agency market increased sales to about €23 billion from €22.7 billion in the previous year. “After the record levels in the last three years, travel agents in Germany again achieved another best sales level in a row,” Fiebig underlined.

Activities in February 2015 UK: HTE AT THE DESTINATIONS SHOW, FEBRUARY 01, 2015 HTE represented the Islands of Hawaii sharing a stand with Bon Voyage. HTE was the “travel expert” on the day and spoke to over 100 people. The day resulted in over 30 tailor-made enquiries to Hawaii, which Bon Voyage has followed-up with.

Germany: In February, HTE Germany attended two VISIT USA Events in Continental Europe, the Visit USA Seminar in Switzerland and a Visit USA Workshop in France: HTE AT VISIT USA SEMINAR, ZURICH, FEBRUARY 04, 2015 HTE represented the Islands of Hawai’i with a stand at the market place at the Visit USA Seminar, a full day event near Zurich. The 372 trade visitors were encouraged to visit each of the 63 exhibitors to complete a questionnaire with questions from each destination and product.

HTE AT VISIT USA WORKSHOP PARIS, FEBRUARY 05, 2015 HTE attended a trade and media event in Paris organized by Visit USA in France. In the morning media and tour operators were invited to have one-to-one sessions with exhibitors followed by a media lunch. The afternoon and evening was dedicated to trade workshops which 117 French travel trade staff (mainly product managers and travel agents) attended.

COOP MARKETING CAMPAIGN WITH CANUSA TOURISTIK: The coop marketing campaign with CANUSA Touristik was launched on Feb 20, 2015 when the interactive Hawai’i travel planner was pushed live. A promotional campaign will run for 4 weeks, but the core functionality - the interactive map for travel planning - will remain part of the permanent Hawai’i landing page on canusa.de. This way high short term awareness for Hawai’i will be achieved while a long term tool will ease and increase inquiries. CANUSA is Germany’s largest

direct seller to North America with a very well selected database of frequent longhaul travelers and a a strong focus on the destination Hawai’i. Hawai’i landing page: www.canusa.de/traumreise-hawaii.html

Vacation builder:

Thank you for reading the HTE Newsletter. Should you have any comments, suggestions or information please feel free to contact Kerstin Wierzeyko ([email protected]).

Mahalo!