Global flight bookings for travel to the Middle East and Africa grew by 10.5% in 2017 and are currently 11.2% ahead of last year so far in 2018.
Analysis by ForwardKeys, which forecasts future travel by analysing 17 million flight booking transactions a day, found that the 2017 growth came from around the world.
Travel from Europe was up 11.6% and 14.1% up from the Americas. Flight bookings to the Middle East and Africa from the Asia Pacific region were up 19%.
ForwardKeys says three principal trends were behind the figures.
First was a recovery from terror attacks that hit North Africa in 2015, second a wave of changes to visa regulations which have been designed to attract visitors and third strong growth of origin markets such as China.
In Africa, flights to Tunisia were 29% up on the previous year. The country suffered three terror attacks in 2015, leading to a travel ban from the UK which was only lifted in July 2017.
In 2017, group travel to Egypt, which suffered a terrorist attack in 2015, surged 66.5%.
Travel to Morocco grew 17% last year, which ForwardKeys put down to increased air capacity from the USA and triple-digit growth in Chinese arrivals stimulated by a new visa exemption for Chinese travellers which took effect in June 2016.
Other destinations that benefitted from various forms of visa liberalisation included: Bahrain, Gabon, Ghana, Israel, Mauritius, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Uganda and the UAE.
ForwardKeys said the Middle East saw strong growth generally except for Bahrain, which was just 1% up on 2017 and Qatar, which recorded a slight fall in bookings, 0.2% down on the previous year. Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE closed their airspace to Qatar Airways in June last year as part of an ongoing political row.
Bookings for the first quarter of 2018 show the Middle East and Africa 16% up on flights from the Americas, 13% from Europe and 4% from Asia Pacific. Argentina has so far seen bookings 34% ahead of where they were this time last year. Spain is 28% ahead, Australia 22% ahead, India and Turkey both 19% ahead and Canada 17% ahead.
Olivier Jager, chief executive of ForwardKeys, said: “For travel to the Middle East and Africa, both the past year and the outlook for the coming quarter can be summed up in just three words: ‘Double-Digit Growth’. Whilst the continuation of the Qatar diplomatic crisis gives cause for concern; there are more reasons to be optimistic. From the start of this year, Rwanda is granting all visitors, regardless of their origin, a visa on arrival; Saudi Arabia is about to introduce new e-visas for tourists; flights to Egypt from Russia are due to resume in February and the FIFA World Cup, taking place in Russia this summer, is likely to produce a short-term lift in transit passengers.”