YouGov study: huge potential for airline tour operators

Germany

Flight and hotel from a single source: flexible booking options are increasingly popular.

How do Germans book their vacations? What factors do people seeking relaxation consider important when booking? Just the flight or a package including a hotel? In the run-up to the ITB travel trade show, Eurowings Holidays commissioned a representative survey of current booking preferences from polling firm YouGov.

Almost 40 percent of those surveyed book their flight as a package holiday. For three-quarters of those booking package vacations, the price-performance ratio is the deciding factor when booking. In addition to a large selection of hotels (51 percent), the option to conveniently add individual additional services such as local transfers is important to almost half of them.

Just under one third of those surveyed put together their vacation trip with separate modules from several providers. What are their reasons for not opting for a vacation package from a single source? 31 percent said they felt a package holiday was too expensive. 23 percent did not want to pay for services they did not use. 22 percent saw lacking options for flexible rebooking or free cancellation. 12 percent were deterred by cancellation fees and 11 percent cited a high deposit at the time of booking as a counterargument.

Booking a package holiday directly with an airline is increasingly popular. Almost a quarter of those surveyed are already aware of this option. When asked what benefits they would like to see, 20 percent mentioned more legroom on the flight, while free meals and more checked baggage would be an incentive for one in seven.

Irina Haselmann, Managing Director of Eurowings Holidays: “We see great potential in booking package tours directly with us as an airline, because over 20 million customers a year already rely on us. As Germany's largest holiday airline, we always have our capacity utilization in mind and last-minute bookers in particular benefit from this with attractive offers. Eurowings Holidays customers can therefore relax and enjoy a package holiday – with free rebooking, favorable cancellation conditions and a deposit of only 50 euro via holidays.eurowings.com. For the customer, this means full flexibility until shortly before departure."

The data for this survey is based on online interviews with members of the YouGov panel who agreed to participate in advance. For this survey, a total of 2033 people were interviewed between 21 and 24 February 2025. The survey was split by age, gender and region and the results were then weighted accordingly. The results are representative of the resident population in Germany aged 18 and over.