Any review of the world’s fastest growing leisure airports this year reveals one startling fact – China has seen the number of international seats available in 2024 grow by more than 75 per cent in a single year.
Data released to Hospitality Investor by aviation analysts OAG show that in 2024 there were 76.12 million international seats departing China, a considerable boost on the 43.43 million available in 2023.
And these numbers far outstrip the growth in international seats departing some of the region’s busiest leisure airports which also recorded strong growth in the same period.
Among them are Hong Kong International Airport which saw growth of 38 per cent to 34.26 million, Bangkok Suvarnabhumi International Airport which registered an increase of 25 per cent to 30.89 million and Kuala Lumpur International Airport, up 23 per cent to 26.28 million.
However, while the Chinese numbers might be impressive, OAG partner John Grant questions just how many of the seats are occupied at take off, as international geopolitics continue to dominate the world’s airlines routes.
He says with political issues and low demand continuing between China and the US, travel between the two destinations remains depressed at about a fifth of the 2019 level of 5.07 million seats at 1.33 million in 2024, although this is considerably more than the 456,411 recorded in 2023.
European recovery
Meanwhile, Europe appears to have made a near full recovery from 2019’s 7.93 million seats departing China for the region with a total of 7.34 million in 2024 and considerably more than the 4.07 million available last year.
Grant says: “Chinese travellers aren’t going to the US and the situation is not going to get any better, that’s for sure. Instead, they seem to be flying to Europe as if it’s going out of fashion right now.
“Chinese airlines are exploiting Russian overflights as obviously European carriers can’t operate them [due to the ongoing war in Ukraine] and they are desperate for hard currency.
“The only place they are going to find hard currency is in Europe and that’s the name of the game right now.”
However, while the seats might be on sale he thinks it is unlikely they are being bought by either the Chinese market which has been slow to return to long-haul travel in a post-pandemic world or by Europeans wishing to visit the country.
Grant says: “I don’t think there is much appetite for Europeans to go there at the moment.
“For the last three or four years the images of China have not been of the Great Wall of China but of people in isolation masks and all sorts of other bad things.”
And further data would appear to back this up; China-based aviation data company FlightMaster has reported international fares in China cost 25 per cent less this summer than last while aviation data firm ForwardKeys said outbound fares were 39 per cent lower year on year between January and September in 2024.
Instead, Grant argues the main long-haul leisure traffic market in 2024 has been from the US to Europe which has been served by 47.35 million seats, a healthy boost on the 44.64 million last year and the 44.61 million in 2019.
And Grant predicts 2025 will be similar for the European market, despite the increasingly unstable geopolitical situation.
He says: “I can’t see the European market changing very much next summer and there would have to be a major geopolitical event to impact it.
“The Middle East crisis throughout this summer didn’t seem to hurt anyone in terms of tourism numbers.”
Grant adds that many of the European airports that have seen strong footfall from the European market have been those in cheaper destinations including Turkey’s Antalya Airport which has been served by 14.72 million international departure seats in 2024, up 12.6 per cent from 13.07 million in 2023.
Power of the US dollar
Meanwhile, much of the growth in seat numbers to the western European market has been driven by US travellers.
Grant says: “You shouldn’t underestimate the power of the US dollar and how that has attracted US nationals in the summer season particularly.”
Grant says Barcelona Airport has been one of the beneficiaries of this, having grown by 14 per cent from 20.6 million international seats in 2023 to 23.48 million in 2024.
He adds niche destinations are also becoming popular for increasingly adventurous American travellers, with Portugal’s Porto Airport seeing a 4.2 pe cent boost from 7.38 million seats in 2023 to 7.69 million this year while Italian destinations are increasingly on the radar too.
However, he warns this growth in trans-Atlantic traffic is unlikely to be replicated in the other direction, particularly after the recent election of Donald Trump to the US presidency.
“The US market’s capacity is fine and that is not going to be an issue,” Grant says. “For US nationals coming here if the dollar continues to rise as it did in the days after Trump’s success [then the numbers will grow].”
“However, it’s going to make the US a very expensive destination from the point of view of European travellers and we know the European market is price sensitive when travelling to the US.”
Regardless of the future, the US’s key leisure airports might not have recorded the same growth as witnessed in Asia but remain strong.
San Francisco International Airport has certainly seen some of the strongest US growth at 14.1 per cent to 9.62 million departing international seats followed by Miami International Airport with an increase of 8.3 per cent to 15.3 million.
Elsewhere, Orlando International Airport’s 8 per cent growth in 2024 saw it rise to 6.37 million seats, just beating Los Angeles International Airport’s increase of 7.9 per cent to 14.28 million and far outstripping New York’s JFK International Airport’s 5.7 per cent boost to 22.13 million international departures.
And providing each aircraft is registering strong capacity, it seems these numbers, as well as those in Europe and Asia, are far more important to the travel industry now no matter how impressive the Chinese growth first appears.