The demand for travel is expected to increase during next month, coinciding with the national holidays on February 25, 26 and 27, expecting that the momentum will be to nearby destinations such as Turkey, Dubai and Cairo due to the short duration of the holidays.
The Directorate-General of Civil Aviation had announced earlier that the total passenger traffic at Kuwait Airport from the beginning of 2022 until the end of last September amounted to about 8.2 million passengers, divided into 4.3 million departures and 3.8 million arrivals, while the total movement of aircraft that were operated from and to the airport during this period about 68,621 flights, reports Al-Rai daily.
Meanwhile, the sales of travel and tourism offices in Kuwait shot up by about 75 percent during 2022 to 276.71 million dinars, compared to 157.83 million the year before.
The revenues of travel and tourism offices, according to the daily, increased during the past year by about 338 percent compared to 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic hit various countries of the world, including Kuwait, and disrupted travel all over the world.
To add insult to injury most travelers were subjected to quarantine and this led to a significant reduction in air traffic despite providing discounts on travel tickets and hotels at various destinations, which threatened many travel and tourism offices with bankruptcy and closure, and rendered a large number of their employees jobless.
It is noted that the trend of the travel agency sales index in Kuwait was upward from January 2021 until the end of December 2022, with the fading of the Corona crisis and the open appetite of citizens and residents to travel after long periods of interruption.
Despite this big jump in sales during 2022 and 2021 compared to 2020, it is still about 10 percent lower than 2019 levels, when it reached about 308.18 million dinars at that time, as office revenues were at their peak with a great demand for travel, before the Corona crisis caused a shock to the tourism sector.
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