Bookings for international air travel fell 20 percent below 2019 levels in the three weeks following Hamas’s attack on Israel, according to travel data service ForwardKeys.

Before the war began, reservations were running at 15 percent below pre-COVID volumes.

Through this year, air travel has surged back from its COVID-era crash.

Now the war “has jeopardized the strong recovery trend in demand,” ForwardKeys vice-president Olivier Ponti said in a statement. “This war is bound to put people off traveling to the region but it has also dented consumer confidence in traveling elsewhere.”

TREND FORECAST: Before the Israel War, bookings to the Middle East had been running 13 percent higher than in 2019; now they have plunged 13 below, a decline of 26 percentage points. As we have forecast, from the fear of rising oil prices should the war escalate to the loss of tourism, the socioeconomic and geopolitical consequences of the Israel War will spread far and wide.