Demand for leisure air travel and limits to growth

Abstract

This paper discusses methodologies for analysing the existence of limits to growth of leisure air travel and defines the concept of demand maturity. It considers the air market as one of a number of inter-related travel markets and applies these concepts to a UK case study. The paper concludes that the UK air international leisure travel market is only at the early stages of maturity; whilst the overall leisure travel market seems to be much nearer to full maturity. This means that if UK air travel is still to experience healthy growth rates, it must be at the expense of the growth of some other UK travel market.