STUTTGART (dpa-AFX) - According to a new study, the travel behavior of people in Germany could almost reach the pre-corona level again this year. "We expect demand in 2024 to be at the level of 2019, the previous record year," said study author Martin Lohmann from the Kiel-based Forschungsgemeinschaft Urlaub und Reisen (FUR). Of course, it could also be a little more or less than 2019, but the stable travel behavior of Germans is remarkable. Lohmann presented the analysis on Friday before the opening of the CMT travel trade fair in Stuttgart.

The FUR researchers expect the German-speaking population to take around 70 million vacation trips lasting at least five days in 2024. Before the pandemic, the figure was around 71 million trips. This figure slumped by almost 30% in the first year of coronavirus in 2020 and, according to preliminary data, had recovered to just over 69 million vacations in 2023.

Travel budget becomes a problem for almost a quarter

According to the data, around two thirds of Germans were already planning one or more vacations in November. In a representative survey for the study, more than a tenth stated that they had no intention of traveling. This could have something to do with their own wallets: 23% of respondents said that a trip in 2024 would not be financially possible. This was one percentage point more than a year earlier and thus a new high in more than 50 years of travel analysis. For 2022, only around one in eight said this, compared to around 18% for the 2020 travel year.

With regard to the crises in the world, Lohmann was calm: "We have never had tourism under paradisiacal conditions in the past five decades," he said. There have always been crises, only the location and type have changed. As a rule, tourism is more or less unaffected by this. "Vacation trips are a cherished habit in Germany. That's why demand remains stable, even if everything around it seems uncertain," said Lohmann.

The CMT (Caravaning - Motor - Touristik) travel trade fair opens its doors in Stuttgart on Saturday and is, by its own account, the world's largest public trade fair for tourism and leisure. In 2023, around 265,000 people visited the CMT - a figure that the organizers would like to reach or even surpass again this year. More than 1600 exhibitors are represented at the trade fair /jwe/DP/mis