The Flight Centre Travel Group Ltd (ASX: FLT) share price is on course to end the month in the red.
In afternoon trade, the travel agent's shares are down almost 3% to $17.44.
Why is the Flight Centre share price dropping?
As well as broad market weakness, the Flight Centre share price appears to have been weighed down by concerns over the state of the travel market.
This follows the release of data from Tourism Research Australia which shows that Australian tourism is still some way off returning to pre-COVID levels.
According to the release, there were 8.3 million overnight trips during the month of March. This is down 17% from March 2019.
One positive, though, is that overnight spending is higher than it was three years ago. Australians spent $6.8 billion in March, up 6% from 2019's levels.
This essentially means that fewer people are making overnight trips, but those that do are paying more than they were three years.
But this could prove to be a problem. With the cost of living increasing materially over the last few months, there's a chance that even fewer people will travel in the near term given that it costs more to do so than previously.
If this happens, this could stifle the travel market recovery at a time when Flight Centre's leisure business was approaching breakeven at long last.
The release also reveals that early data shows domestic overnight trip rates for April and the first three weeks of May were down in comparison to the same period last year.
These are interesting times (yet again) for the travel sector and the Flight Centre share price.
