BERLIN – More and more holidaymakers are spending heavily on the best weeks of the year. With a 48 per cent increase in the last five years, luxury travel has grown twice as fast as all other types of foreign trips, which grew by 24 per cent. This is the result of a special evaluation of the WorldTravel Monitor, which is conducted by IPK International and commissioned by ITB Berlin.

Luxury trips were defined for this analysis as all short trips with spending of more than 750 euros per night and all long trips costing more than 500 euros per night. In 2014, the world population undertook 46 million international luxury trips. The market share of these trips rose from 3.9 percent in 2009 to 4.6 per cent in 2014.

A total of 172 billion euros was spent on international luxury travel last year.This means that for foreign travel every eighth euro was spent on luxury products. More than 1,000 euros per night was spent by luxury travellers from the United Arab Emirates, India, Kuwait, Brazil, Australia, Canada and China (in descending order). Turnover did not increase due to higher spending per person but rather from a rising number of travellers. Growth drivers wereabove all new customers in emerging markets, who moved up into the luxury travel segment, or those who returned to the luxury market after the crisis, such as travellers from the USA.

The largest source markets for luxury travel are the USA, with 9.2 million foreign luxury trips, and China, with 6.9 million. Other major source marketsare Japan, Canada and Australia. In Europe, most luxury trips are undertaken by the British, with 1.5 million, ahead of the French and theGermans. The largest growth rate was in the number of luxury trips undertaken by the Chinese, followed by the USA, Canada, Taiwan, Koreaand the UAE. Russia also showed strong growth until 2013 but the figures declined last year. The luxury travel markets in Japan (-20 per cent), Mexicoand Scandinavia also dropped back.

The most popular luxury travel destination by far was the USA, with 6.2million trips, ahead of China and Mexico. In Europe, Italy and Germany share first place with 2.2 million luxury travel visitors each, ahead of France and