Russia’s war in Ukraine and instability in eastern Europe has led to increased demand for UK holidaymakers to spend Easter in countries such as Spain and Portugal.
New tourism trends data suggests that the conflict has led to a drop in demand for countries in the eastern Mediterranean such as Greece and Turkey.
Searches for flights from the UK to the four countries fell sharply overall in the days after the Russian invasion by between 30% and 40%.
However, search volumes for Spain and Portugal recovered within 5-6 days, while Turkey and Greece had not recovered volumes 13 days later.
Following the outbreak, flight searches and spontaneous demand from the grew by 13.2% for Portugal and 12.7% for Spain, while it fell 10.45% for Turkey and 8.15% for Greece.
The research by tourism intelligence platform Mabrian Technologies covered searches from the UK made between February 11 and March 8 for flights to Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Greece to travel between April 11 and May 1.
The study also found that the cost of hotel stays had risen by as much as 17% in Portugal and 14% in Spain.
In contrast, prices in fell by as much as 4% in three and four-star hotels, previously most frequented by Russian travellers.
The average price of 3-star hotels in Greece fell by 9%, while 4- and 5-star hotels rose by 8% and 20%, respectively.
Spain’s average hotel prices are more than 20% above the destinations analysed and 15% above prices of Portugal, its immediate competitor in terms of prices.
Mabrian marketing and sales director Carlos Cendra said: “Knowing how the Russian conflict has affected the Easter period in the short term allows the rest of the countries and tourist destinations to know what the trend will be if the conflict continues.
“In this case, that means that Spain and Portugal can confidently focus on continuing to invest to attract European travellers for the high demand period of Easter.”