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| Wizz Air has teamed up with the Hungarian National Tourist Office to promote flights from London Luton to Budapest. The campaign uses 12 branded taxis to promote ‘Hungary – a love for life’. The taxi campaign was launched in June and will run for 12 months. The number of nights spent in Hungary by UK visitors from January to March increased by more than 30% year-on-year, partly driven by Wizz Air services. |
It has been three months since anna.aero last looked at UK market growth by country. Data for the first six months of 2008 is now available for comparison with the previous year.
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| Source: UK CAA |
In an Easter-less April and June traffic to all eight mature markets was down in both months apart from Ireland in June. In May five of the eight markets reported year-on-year growth but none of more than 5%.
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| Source: UK CAA |
Among the “emerging” markets Romania continues to benefit from having joined the EU last year and the emergence of low-cost flights particularly from Wizz Air. Poland continues to amaze, though growth in the second quarter of 2008 was around 25% rather than the 40% achieved in the first quarter. Morocco, after a storming 2007 is seeing capacity adjustments that better reflect demand. Daily services by British Airways from London Heathrow to Casablanca which operated last summer have been axed this year.
Poland still fastest growing market by volume
In the first half of 2008 the Polish market grew fastest with over 600,000 additional passengers compared with the previous year.
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| Source: UK CAA |
Fortunes were mixed for Central European countries with Poland, Hungary and Romania among the top 10 fastest growing markets, while the Czech Republic (basically Prague) was in the bottom five with demand falling. The political unrest in Kenya continued to take its toll on air travel demand during the last few months. The downsizing of Alitalia appears to have impacted the Italian market to a noticeable degree.
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