While Japan and the Middle East have the highest tourist spending on luxury fashion, India surprises as a popular fine dining destination. Find out which countries will fuel travel for the remainder of 2024.
Asia and the Middle East have emerged as popular destinations for luxury shoppers this year. While Japan continues to break records in tourist luxury spending due to cheaper luxury goods from the weak Yen, the UAE is also catching up as a luxury shoppers’ destination with a high inflow of tourists from the Asia-Pacific region. According to the Mastercard Travel Trends 2024 report, the UAE noted a massive 61% increase in luxury fashion sales by tourists this March.
Popular luxury shopping hubs in Europe, France, Italy, and the UK, too, continued to grow in luxury fashion sales by tourists in the 12 months preceding March 2024. Still, the growth was in smaller double-digit increments compared to a year before.
Mexico, however, noted a drop in luxury sales with a significant 22% decline particularly in luxury apparel sales by tourists because the Peso reached its highest value against the US dollar in five years, making discretionary spending more expensive in the region.
A new destination tempts fine-dine enthusiasts
Post-pandemic, experiential travel continues to gain global momentum with a rising interest in nightlife, fine dining, music concerts, and sports activities.
From March 2023 to March 2024, spending on fine dining saw double-digit percentage growth in popular luxury tourist destinations such as Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, and the UK, but spending on casual dining increased even more.
An unusual destination emerged as a new attraction for gourmands. India saw a 55% increase in tourist spending on fine dining experiences, year-on-year, because of an evolving fine dining scene, making it the only popular tourist destination other than the US, where tourist spending on fine dining exceeded casual dining.
This March, India marked another milestone by leading the recovery of tourists traveling to the US with a remarkable increase of 162,000 visitors compared to 2019, despite a weakened rupee versus the U.S. dollar.
2024 Travel Forecasts
According to the report, experiential travel accounted for 12% of total global tourism spending in March 2024, the highest ever, and is likely to fuel tourism spending in the remainder of 2024.
Munich is forecast to become the hottest tourist destination this summer, with the European Football Championship starting in June. Japan will continue to relish the high-tourist momentum through the year.
A new European destination - Tirana in Albania, is gaining popularity among travelers this summer because of cheaper hospitality costs and the short distances from popular European coastal destinations like Greece.
In the first three months of 2024, Cruises noted a 16% increase in transactions compared to the same period in 2019, and they are likely to become more popular through 2024.
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