2024 could be the biggest year ever for travel

Next year is likely to be record-breaking for global tourism – and British travellers are leading the way, says Nick Trend

They were strange years, 2020 and 2021. The world seemed to stop turning, travel ground to a halt. Overnight, we forgot our anxieties about over-tourism and worried more about cancelling our trips and getting refunds. The figures are staggering. The World Tourism Organisation says that the number of international travellers, which had peaked at 1.46billion in 2019, collapsed to 406 million in 2020, and barely improved to 459 million in 2021.

It has taken two more years for the industry to recover from the shock, and for many people to feel confident enough to start booking again. But all the signs are that this year the recovery is almost complete. The WTO’s figures indicate international travellers reached nearly one billion in 2022, and it looks as though we are now once more approaching the level we saw in 2019. So it is seeming more and more likely that 2024 will be the biggest year for travel that the world has ever known.

In some places, the breakthrough is happening already. The WTO recently published data on the 10 countries that are the biggest contributors to world tourism – in other words, whose populations travel abroad the most – for the first six months of this year. It shows that the numbers of international travellers departing from Germany, Italy, the United States and the UK were all up more than 10 per cent compared with the same period in the year before the pandemic. And it seems that the British are currently the most determined of all, showing growth of 16 per cent over 2019.

In short, as the new year looms, it is clear that our hunger to seek out guaranteed sunshine, see new places and engage with unfamiliar cultures has never been greater.

But surely there are limits on how much travel can grow, and whether we want it to? There are obviously environmental concerns, and certainly some destinations are reaching the sort of saturation point that was becoming a problem before the pandemic. Venice is one of the best examples of this. This year it has suffered an average of twice as many day visitors as the 50,000 which the city’s Ca’ Foscari University calculated, in 2018, to be manageable. Whether the €5 fee for day-trippers proposed from next spring will be enough to stem this is another question. And it now has more tourist beds available than number of residents in the city.

But, Venice aside, the current key to whether or not world tourism keeps on growing is not so much the amount of accommodation available. Generally speaking, there are enough hotels, apartments, villas, Airbnbs and holiday cottages in the world to absorb the rising demand in the shorter term. And even where accommodation is tight, it seems we are willing to be flexible in our plans to get around the problem.

What really makes a difference to the potential for travel to expand is the availability of airline seats. And all the signs are that, as far as UK and European airlines are concerned, there will be significant growth next year. Many had already announced expanded programmes for 2024 and several have recently added to that.

Last week, Steve Heapy, CEO of Jet2.com and Jet2holidays, said that it was already expanding its summer 2024 programme, by adding 70,000 extra seats to destinations in mainland Spain, the Canaries, the Balearics, Portugal, Turkey, Croatia and Greece from eight UK airports. The week before, easyJet had also announced 12 new routes from eight UK airports for summer 2024.

The only fly in the ointment seems to be whether or not the airlines can get hold of enough planes to meet the demand. Ryanair said in September that it was suffering delays in the delivery of some of the 57 new aircraft it currently has on order from Boeing, though it still hopes to resolve the issue in time for the peak summer programme in 2024.

So, for better or worse, it looks as though more of the world will be going places next year than ever before.

If you have had a problem with your holiday or travel arrangements, contact our troubleshooter, Gill Charlton, or our consumer expert, Nick Trend, at the email address below. We also have more than 150 destination experts all over the world who can help with suggestions for great places to stay, to eat and to visit. Please email asktheexperts @telegraph.co.uk, giving your full name and, if your query is about a dispute with a travel company, your address, telephone number and any booking reference. We regret that we cannot personally answer all queries, but your email will be acknowledged.

j Buoyant: the pent-up desire for travel is now coming through