Ramadan sees bookings slump

Demand peaks in July but travellers cut short holidays for start of the holy month

The summer holiday season has felt the impact from an early Ramadan which caused August bookings to slump.

Travel agents canvassed by ATN reported that while business in July was up on last year, many travellers chose to cut short summer breaks and return home in time for the start of Ramadan in August.

Eid holiday traffic has also been impacted by the fact that it will take place in mid-September, when many expats are due to return from leave in time for the start of the school year.

“Ramadan starting early this summer definitely impacted on the volume of sales,” said Mansoor Pasha, manager retail and leisure, Al Futtaim Travel.
“We have lost one full month in the summer period.

UAE nationals have returned earlier than expected as they prefer spending Ramadan at home and expats visiting their home countries are not due back until mid-September, which has impacted the Eid holiday traffic. So far August sales are very low compared to last year, but hopefully the last 10 days of Ramadan should pick up as this is a last-minute market.”

Mohamed Al Rais, deputy managing director, Al Rais Travel said that while he had seen a major slump in leisure bookings in August, he was able to offset this by catering to the pilgrimage market with Umrah packages to Mecca.

“All travellers booked early and came back early, so demand was very high for July and most seats were sold out for the main destinations,” said Al Rais.

“In Ramadan it is slow, but on the other hand a lot of people have travelled to Saudi for Umrah, which meant we were less affected.”

Emirates Holidays reported a “very good” season this year for the high-end market, with business levels “much better than last year”.

Davinder Kaur, destination development manager, Emirates Holidays said the trend had been for travellers to leave much earlier than usual to be back in time for Ramadan.

Kaur agreed that while the Eid break was expected to be quieter than usual due to the timing, this year’s second Eid is expected to see high demand.
“We are still monitoring the figures for Eid but they are suggesting so far that this Eid will not be that popular. This year we expect the second Eid [in November] which is normally the quieter one to be very busy.”

Travel agents surveyed pegged Malaysia as the stand-out favourite this summer, which Kaur attributed partly to the destination’s ‘Ramadan-friendly appeal’.

“This year Malaysia is the clear winner in terms of destinations,” said Kaur. “This year we did a special brochure just for Malaysia, separate to our normal brochure, which was very successful.”

The feedback for Malaysia has always been good. Being an Asian country everything stays open till very late which the GCC nationals like, and there are a lot of activities to do.”