Since the outbreak of the pandemic in the last two years, the tradition to travel at the end of Ramadan in the Middle East had halted. However, this year, a study by ForwardKeys says that the tradition has returned with force and the numbers are far more than in 2020.

The custom of travelling at the end of Ramadan is making a significant revival this year, says a study released by data aggregator ForwardKeys. The study showed that as of April 13, outbound flight bookings from the Middle East for travel covering the last 10 days of the holy month, from April 22 to May 22, have reached 64 pc, which is a 220 pc increase on travel from the same period last year.

Bahrain topped the list of destination set to recovery for outbound destinations by having booking departures up to 90 pc of  2019 levels. Following Bahrain, the list goes on with Jordan at 86 pc, the UAE with 84 pc, Qatar with 75 pc and Kuwait with 68 pc.

A deeper analysis of the outbound markets revealed that a major attribute helping the recovery is expat workers travelling back home. For example, the top destinations from the UAE are Pakistan and India and from Bahrain are the UAE, India and Bangladesh.

For the holiday-makers from the region, Maldives was the top destination, with bookings of 178 pc more than in 2019. France followed with 2 pc more than 2019, while Pakistan was only 2 pc lower and Bangladesh and the UK were 3 pc lower than 2019.

These were all far better in numbers compared to the end of Ramadan in the previous year. After that the next best performing destinations are the UAE, with 12 pc behind, Turkey and the Philippines, both 21 pc behind, Thailand 24 pc behind and Spain 26 pc behind.

Traditionally one of the most popular destination during this period, UK’s bookings showed significant difference in interest from the various source markets. In the UAE the bookings for the UK were just 2 pc behind 2019, while Saudi Arabia and Bahrain were 17pc and 10pc behind respectively, whereas bookings from Kuwait and Egypt were 32 pc and 59 pc more respectively.

ForwardKeys says that the recovery was also reflected an interesting trend towards premium class travel. In 2019, 20 pc of departures from Kuwait to the UK were in first or business class, however this year the proportion has risen to 29 pc.

“As COVID-19 travel restrictions are being removed, the world is starting to travel again; and that trend is well demonstrated by the return to traditional travel at the end of Ramadan. Throughout the pandemic, the Maldives has done exceptionally well at attracting visitors and the reputation it has created for itself is evidently paying off, most notably in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which together account for 83% of arrivals from the Middle East.” Concludes Olivier Ponti, VP Insights, ForwardKeys.