In its report European Tourism 2019 - Trends & Prospects (Q3/2019) released this week, the European Travel Commission says that European tourism demand has remained stable in the third quarter and that the overarching regional outlook remains unchanged at a projected 3-4% growth in international tourist arrivals in 2019.

However, the ETC also said that prolonged US-China trade disputes and dragged-out Brexit negotiations are limiting global growth of international tourism.

Regarding Brexit specifically, the ETC projects a 7% drop in outbound trips from the UK in 2020, 8% in 2021, with Spain (-1.6M trips in 2021) and Ireland (-5% of total arrivals in 2021) being the countries most severely impacted.

UK inbound travel is also expected to shrink as a result of negative sentiments in the EU related to Brexit, but to a much lesser extent because of the beneficial effect of the weakness of the GBP against the Euro.