Travel agents reported that the timing of this year’s Eid al-Fitr holiday in early September led to a lack of demand for outbound travel over the period.
With many people having just returned from their summer break in time for the start of the school year, agents said the majority of travellers were opting to wait until Eid al-Adha, or second Eid, set to take place in mid-November, before taking another holiday.
| Advertisement |
“The demand this year was quite a lot lower than expected,” said Candida Fitzsimmons, leisure travel consultant at Airlink International.
“The Eid festival dates coincided with the end of the summer vacation and many people were still away on holiday in their home countries,” she said.
According to Fitzsimmons, the depressed demand meant that for those that did book, they were able to pick up some last-minute bargains – a usually unheard-of scenerio for the Eid period.
“We experienced a lot of last minute enquiries for travel within the Middle East – to nearby cities such as Salalah in Oman, and we found there was no hassle with finding rooms as not many hotels in the region were fully booked this year.
“Hotels also had availability of rooms at affordable rates, which is very unusual over Eid when hotels are normally sold out or charging exorbitant prices.”
Shibly Jowhershah, head of leisure and marketing at Al Naboodah Travel & Tourism said this year’s travel trend had been “erratic” in general, thanks to Ramadan in the summer causing peak season holiday bookings to slump, followed by the early Eid break impacting business volumes.
“The gap between summer and Eid was shorter this year, and as Eid timing is always uncertain, many people could not plan their vacation as the holiday was declared at the last moment,” he said.
But Jowhershah added that projections for the coming Eid al-Adha festival were looking extremely healthy.
“I think the November Eid will be quite good in terms of outbound travel. It is now established to fall around Tuesday 16 November which means a possible five days of holiday. It’s guaranteed there will be lots of travel,” he said.
Emirates Holidays is also anticipating a surge in demand over Eid al-Adha. “This year we expect second Eid which is normally the quieter one to be very busy,” said Davinder Kaur, destination development manager.
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
