Global travel and tourism have slumped more than expected this year and the outlook for 2010 is not much better, according to a prominent research group’s latest report.

Reductions in international air passenger traffic, leisure trips and business travel, and losses suffered by travel companies mean spending in the sector will fall by 5.5 per cent this year compared with 2008, said Oxford Economics in its annual assessment for the World Travel & Tourism Council. The decline means that travel and tourism’s contribution to global gross domestic product is forecast to be 9.3 per cent, down from 9.6 per cent in 2008 and worse than the researchers had predicted at the start of the year.