Brussels tourism sector hardest hit by terror attacks, says Euromonitor

In the wake of the terrorist murders in #Brussels on Tuesday, industry analyst Euromonitor International has predicted a 10-20 percent fall in bookings to the Belgian capital in the short- to medium-term. 

‘The impact of these terrible events on the travel and tourism in the city is likely to have a predominantly short to medium term impact on the development of the industry, even though, that the sector in the country has been showing modest growth in 2015 as travellers remained cautious, cutting back on their travel plans in a bid to save money,’ said Nadejda Popova, travel project manager at Euromonitor International.

Brussels concentrates most of Belgium’s business services or activities with the highest value added, while its main airport handled 22 million passengers in 2014, making it the 23rd busiest in Europe. Ms Popova noted that the city recorded more than three million visitors in 2014 – an increase of almost four percent on the previous year, while air travel continued to be a major driver of growth in transportation in 2015 in Belgium.

‘The #terroristattacks are expected to slow down travel demand and possibly could lead to a 10-20% decline in bookings following heightened fears of further attacks in the city similar to the tourism performance of such cities as Paris, Madrid, and London following the terrorist attacks in these parts of the world,’ she said. ‘However, this is not expected to have a long-term impact as the European travel industry has proven to be very resilient to such external impacts and recover fairly quickly.’

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