LUXURY RIVER AND LAND TOURS FLOAT TOURISTS’ BOATS
DESPITE the ongoing crisis buffeting the aviation sector, luxury tour companies are experiencing a post-lockdown boom in bookings.
Next year, the over-55s market in particular is booking luxury extended trips to Europe via river cruises or land-based coach tours.
“We are seeing a great resurgence in bookings and interest in Europe, in land and river cruises, in the Danube, the Rhine, the Douro and the exotics like Morocco and in Iceland there is huge interest across the board,’’ says Tauck’s Australian-based managing director, David Clark. US-based tour operator Tauck says most of its Australian clients are typically booking consecutive sevenday tours of Ireland, London, Paris, or the Italian region of Puglia.
However, Mr Clark, who is actively recruiting more staff to service Tauck’s local operations, says Australians are being held back by the lack of outbound aircraft.
Travel agents are scrambling to find sufficient outbound flights given airlines are operating at about 60 per cent of pre-Covid capacity and none of the Chinese operators such as China Eastern and China Southern and Cathay Pacific have returned to Australian skies. “We are having a lot of struggle with getting airfares. That is the feedback from our travel adviser partners,” Mr Clark said.
However, he said appetite from his Australian clients to book back-to-back land and river tours to make up for lost time during the pandemic was strong and clients were spending much more on travel than usual.
“For 2023 we are seeing our booking levels are back to about 2019 booking levels,’’ Mr Clark said.
In seven weeks, Tauck will also start welcoming North American tourists to Australian and New Zealand shores with a range of summer itineraries.