International air reservations for Catalonia fell 22 per cent from the beginning of October up to October 25, benchmarked against the equivalent dates last year, according to ForwardKeys.
Olivier Jager, CEO, ForwardKeys said: “Domestic political unrest almost always deters visitors and that is what we are seeing now. This will also have a knock-on to other parts of Spain because many visitors arriving in Catalonia will travel around the country.
“If the political crisis worsens, I fear we will see a further decline in bookings. This trend will be of great concern because travel & tourism represents such a large proportion of the Spanish economy, over 14 per cent of GDP.”
ForwardKeys analyses 17 million flight booking transactions a day to forecast future travel patterns.
