There were two pieces of news this week which may have a major impact on the cost of holidays next year.
Some 4.5 million Russians visit Turkey every year - around twice the number who travel from Britain and second only to Germany (just over five million). If relations between the two countries are not repaired quickly, the effect on beach hotels and resorts, as well as on tourism to Istanbul, will be extremely significant.
The other development came a couple of days earlier. As a result of the Paris attacks and tensions in Brussels (as well as terrorist attacks in Turkey), the US State Department issued a Worldwide Travel Alert to its citizens, highlighting an increased threat from terrorism. It warned of the “likelihood” that terror attacks will continue and advised avoiding “large crowds or crowded places". This was not a very reassuring message for those who might have been planning to visit major tourist sights and resorts. A representative of a top hotel in Paris told me this week that there was an immediate surge in cancellations from Americans. His hotel was currently operating at only five per cent occupancy.
The longer term impact of the State Department alert may be reduced because, technically, it expires on February 24, 2016. Americans would still have time to plan their summer holidays after that. But as that surge in cancellations confirms, they are - unlike most Britons - nervous travellers, and it is my guess that so much psychological damage has already been done by the atrocities in Paris that many of them will decide to give Europe a miss next year.
The raw numbers aren’t huge - about two million Americans visit France each year, while a similar number go to Italy - countries which get upwards of 80 million visitors a year. But when Americans do travel, they spend heavily. If they don’t book for 2016 many of Europe’s top end hotels - including those in Britain which attracts about three million Americans - will be facing a serious shortage of custom, and they will need to win it back somehow.
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In Paris and Brussels - the hardest hit currently, some of the top hotels say they will maintain prices for the time being. But a quick search on the hotel booking site booking.com reveals several five-star hotels in Paris offering discounts of more than 30 per cent for bookings this weekend and in the weeks ahead. There are plenty of cheap fares on Eurostar too and lots of offers for less expensive hotels.
Certainly, if significant numbers of Americans do stay away from Europe in 2016, and the Russians don’t go to Turkey at all - and both scenarios seem highly likely - then the discounting in Paris is a taste of what we can expect on a much wider scale throughout the continent.
I should say that the link between this year’s appalling terrorist attacks, the war in Syria, and a likely fall in holiday prices, is not a one I feel particularly comfortable about making. But as well as inflicting physical damage, a critical part of the terrorists’ agenda is to sabotage the economic importance of tourism. If a temporary round of lower prices encourages people to travel again, then that is a vital step in the fightback of ordinary people against those who seek to use terror to control the lives of others.
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