24hoursworld

Travel: Corona pandemic weighs on recovery in the tourism industry

Summer is travel time. But the tourism industry is still a long way from the level before the Corona crisis. The travel company Tui also has a problem with Great Britain.

The corona pandemic continues to affect the tourism industry. Frankfurt Airport continued to work its way out of the low in the holiday month of July.

The world’s largest travel group Tui is expecting weaker summer business than before due to weak bookings from Great Britain.

The travel offer in the most important vacation months should now only reach 60 percent of the pre-crisis level of 2019 instead of 75 percent, as the group announced on Thursday. In Germany, however, Tui wants to reach 75 to 80 percent.

Tui reported a strong increase in bookings in the past few weeks. In total, the group has so far counted around 4.2 million bookings for the summer. The prices would be on average nine percent higher than in summer 2019.

“The German market was already doing well in July,” said Tui CEO Fritz Joussen in a conference call. However, many customers booked their trips at extremely short notice due to the ongoing uncertainty. “We are very successful where we have the entrepreneurial freedom to start anew. Where we are restricted and the governments create uncertainty, that is reflected in our bookings, ”said the manager.

For example, the government in London had drawn up a green list of countries to which domestic vacationers can travel without having to be quarantined after returning. A little later, however, she struck Portugal off the list again. Many holidaymakers started their early return journey, others canceled their trips or did not even book. In the past quarter, Tui in England had practically no bookings, reported Joussen.

Tui was able to contain the loss in the past quarter. At 935 million euros, the minus was a third lower than in the first corona lockdown a year earlier. At that time, the business had almost completely collapsed due to the travel restrictions.

The number of passengers at the largest German airport, Frankfurt, reached just under 2.85 million in the holiday month of July, the highest value since the beginning of the pandemic, as the operator Fraport announced. That was more than twice as many travelers as a year earlier, but still 59 percent fewer than before the crisis began in July 2019. Compared to July 2020, freight and airmail increased by 31 percent to more than 192,200 tons.

For this year, Fraport boss Stefan Schulte expects “less than 20 to 25 million” passengers in Frankfurt. In 2020, the number of passengers had slumped to less than 19 million after the airport had a record year of more than 70 million in 2019. Schulte does not expect this level again until 2025 or 2026.

According to the Federal Association of the German Aviation Industry, it takes a long breath. This year, a third of the traffic performance of 2019 could be achieved if the recent recovery continues, the association recently said. With further vaccinations, declining travel restrictions and a robust economy, 80 percent of the pre-crisis figures are possible in the coming year. “The level of 2019, however, would only be reached by 2025.”

Source Link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Latest Posts