German holiday bookings suffered their sharpest monthly decline of the current tourism year in March 2026, as the outbreak of the Iran war triggered an immediate retreat in consumer confidence and sent demand for organised travel into sharp reverse across both the winter and summer seasons.
Data from Travel Data + Analytics (TDA), which tracks bookings made through travel agencies, online travel agencies, and tour operator websites, show that holiday bookings for the current 2025/26 winter season plummeted by almost half in March, while those for summer 2026 fell by just under a fifth. Combined, the decline amounts to a total of 25% for the 2025/26 tourism year over the course of a single booking month.
The turning point: the first week of March
The scale of the reversal is particularly striking given the strength of the market just weeks earlier. Until the end of February 2026, the German outbound travel market was firmly in positive territory, with the winter season showing revenue growth of 4% compared to the same period in 2024/25 and summer 2026 bookings running 7% ahead of the previous year.
The breakdown came swiftly and decisively. In the very first week of the conflict, between 2 and 8 March, bookings fell by approximately 20% compared to the immediately preceding week, according to Roland Gassner, Director of Business Development at Travel Data + Analytics. A further decline of around 10% followed in the second week of March, compounding the damage.
Egypt and Turkey absorb the heaviest losses
The destinations hardest hit were those either directly affected by travel warnings or closely associated in consumer perception with Middle East instability. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Israel saw demand essentially collapse in the opening days of the conflict, according to TDA data.
Egypt suffered a booking drop of 40% from the very first week of March. Turkey, which had entered 2026 as the single most popular summer destination for German travellers by both revenue and passenger numbers, also moved sharply downward. By the third week of March, both Egypt and Turkey had stabilised, but at levels approximately 60% of the previous year’s figures, representing a significant structural loss for the season.
The blow to Turkey is particularly notable given the momentum it carried into the year. As recently as the end of January 2026, TDA analysis prepared for the German Travel Association (DRV) showed Turkey leading all summer destinations, accounting for roughly a quarter of all advance bookings made by German travellers for the summer season.
Booking shifts push up average prices
Not all demand evaporated. A portion of travellers who abandoned affected destinations redirected their bookings toward alternatives, a pattern that produced an unintended side effect: the average revenue per new booking rose by approximately 200 euros, as the substitute destinations chosen were generally more expensive than markets such as Egypt or Turkey.
Greece recorded comparatively mild single-digit losses in the German market during March, though TDA noted that its summer season had not yet begun in earnest, leaving the full extent of any impact still to emerge. Destinations in Southeast Asia and the Maldives, which had been showing strong early-booking momentum from Germany before the outbreak of the conflict, did not yet show a clear compensatory surge in the data, partly due to their smaller overall booking volumes.
A market transformed in weeks
The speed and severity of the March reversal underlines how exposed the German organised travel market remains to geopolitical shocks, particularly those that affect airspace, consumer psychology, and perceptions of regional safety simultaneously.
Before the conflict, the German travel industry had entered 2026 with considerable optimism. The DRV had forecast total holiday spending by German travellers of around 86 billion euros for the full year, with cruise bookings, Eastern Mediterranean destinations, and long-haul travel all showing strong early momentum. Turkey had been projected as the leading summer destination, with Egypt, Italy, Spain, and Tunisia also recording high demand in advance booking data.
That picture has changed materially. With the winter season drawing to a close and summer 2026 now the primary focus of the market, the tourism industry faces a period of uncertainty over how quickly and how fully confidence will return, and which destinations will ultimately benefit from redirected demand as the season progresses.
