ForwardKeys is a travel intelligence company founded on the simple idea that businesses dependent on international travel, such as DMOs (Destinations Management Organisations) and tourism organisations can make better strategic decisions if they know who is travelling where, when, and for how long.

The ForwardKeys data ecosystem provides exclusive insights into air travel through a variety of data partners and industry entities covering direct airline tickets and TA bookings, flight searches, seat capacity, events, air traffic statistics and more. The data is processed and enriched using a combination of expert reviews, algorithmic processing, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools to produce discrete data products which offer unparalleled insight into the profile, behaviour and impact of past, present, and future travellers.

The following indexes give a snapshot of the post-COVID-19 recovery of tourist travel across key European destinations — revealing key insights at a pivotal moment for the industry.

International arrivals

The International Arrivals dataset shows actual passenger arrivals by city for the top 30 destinations across Europe in 2022, ranked by international tourist air arrivals and benchmarked against the corresponding figures for 2019.

The results are based on ForwardKeys’ Total Air Market (TAM) data, which uses a proprietary algorithm to accurately estimate total air passenger traffic alongside extensive traveller profiling — including direct bookings with low-cost carriers, which represent a significant volume of air travel in Europe. The result is a clearer picture of total traveller arrivals covering 100% of scheduled flights — the most comprehensive air travel data in the industry and in the market now.

ForwardKeys Total Air Market data updated as of 20 May 2023

Flight Searches

The Flight Searches ranking displays total global searches for international travel during the summer period (July/August 2023). Destinations are ranked by search volume and benchmarked against the equivalent period for 2022 — giving a clear indicator of the popularity of destinations ahead of the Summer 2023 season and reflecting the latest changes in travel preferences.

The data aggregates searches from the most important travel agencies and metasearch engines on the market (Kayak, Skyscanner, Wego, Google Flights, Kiwi and more), as well as for carriers that work with Kiwi, comprising of more than 40 billion searches annually.

ForwardKeys Flight Searches results have been updated as of 22 July 2023

For a more comprehensive understanding of the full range of data solutions for Destinations, make an appointment with our team members listed below.

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