Travel volumes are up and there is more optimism for future

693 travellers from the UAE responded to the survey during July 2009.

Travel has increased since the last survey in April 2009, with a 7% rise noted in number of respondents taking short haul business and long haul leisure trips. Short haul leisure travel has also increased among more frequent flyers with the number of people taking 3 or more trips in the last year up from up from 15% to 20%.

The future is looking brighter still as travel is expected to increase across the board over the coming year as confidence increases further; 5% more respondents are expecting to see an increase in business trips and 8% more are expecting to increase their leisure travel than they were in April.

Jane Wilson, Director, Travel and Tourism Research at YouGov, says:

"We are now seeing some actual improvements in travel volumes and trends."

Wilson adds, "At the end of 2008 we witnessed a sharp downward trend, but conditions are improving and there is strong optimism that this will improve further. There seems to be a lot more confidence in the current economic environment."

Economy class remains increasingly popular with over half (55%) of business travellers and over three quarters (78%) leisure travellers saying this is their usual class. This is expected to stabilise in the future with over half (55% business and 59% leisure) expecting their class of travel to remain the same.

India remains the top travel destination for both business and leisure, followed by other short haul destinations. However, long haul destinations have started to become more popular again; the UK is now the 4th most popular destination for business trips and 7th for leisure. Malaysia has also increased in popularity (up from 1% to 3%) for business and Thailand (up from 1% to 4%) for leisure.

This trend is expected to continue over the next year with the UK and Australia becoming more popular for both types of trip along with China for business trips and Malaysia, Canada, Singapore and the US all in the top 10 destinations for leisure.

"This is a good sign that things are improving, at the end of 2008 people became more cautious and travel became more localised. Now we are starting to see the trend reversing. It will be very interesting to see how these opinions shape up. So far, through the tracker, we have started to see last quarters' optimism turn into reality it will be very interesting to see how this new optimism plays out and how trends settle in the third quarter of 2009," adds Wilson.