Corporate Travel Analysis Reports For Asia

Singapore Airlines' initial performance in the Canberra market has been above expectations with the load factor between Canberra and Singapore particularly encouraging. The average load factor on the Canberra-Singapore and Singapore-Canberra sectors in the first five months of the operation was above 80%, fuelled by strong local demand.

The SIA Group has until now failed to capitalise on the potential for linking its range of intra-Group operations. That will change, which is good news for Scoot, as well as for travellers. Another piece of good news comes as Scoot expands its range of long haul destinations to serve over its Singapore hub. Athens is first to be added, in Jun-2017.

The Singapore Airlines (SIA) Group has grown its passenger traffic to and from Australia by 50% over the last five years. SIA the parent airline has grown by 21% while new long haul LCC subsidiary Scoot has accounted for most of the remaining growth.

Although Indonesia has a population of 250 million people and sits only a few kilometres off Australia's coast, the massive market is a tiny player in tourism rankings. The number of Indonesian tourists to Australia - at 178,000 in the year to Feb-2017, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) - was less than half the number of Singaporeans (population under 6 million). The good news was that was up 20% year on year, but there's still a long way to go.

Philippine Airlines (PAL) has emerged as one of the most aggressive competitors on the kangaroo route between Sydney and London since rescheduling some of its Sydney flights in late 2015 to connect with London. PAL could potentially further increase its market share in the highly competitive Australia-Europe market in 2018 as it adds more flights to Australia and launches a second European destination.

Malaysia Airlines is aiming to improve its performance in Australia by increasing its load factor and through closer relationships with travel agents, particularly in the corporate sector.

InterContinental Hotel Group and Mulpha Australia Ltd have recently announced (22-Feb-2017) a proposed major renovation of the InterContinental Sydney hotel which is expected to exceed AUD200 million.

As Cathay Pacific is being forced to undergo a competitive metamorphosis, it is exploring all options. The latest example is an expected announcement of a new Cathay Pacific route from Hong Kong to Christchurch in New Zealand's South Island. The service is expected to be seasonal (for the New Zealand summer), and is only Cathay's second seasonal long haul route after the Jan-2017 announcement of northern summer service to Barcelona.

New Zealand is a small network component for Cathay but one of its last strongholds, due to a joint venture with Air New Zealand. The New Zealand government reluctantly extended approval for the JV despite Cathay and Air NZ reneging on an offer to use it to link Hong Kong with Christchurch, as well as Auckland. This would thereby have extended the JV to benefit more of New Zealand - a sensitive local matter based on the assertion that Auckland was receiving disproportionate air service benefit.

Tourism Australia has reported 8.3 million international arrivals to Australia in 2016, an increase of 11% year-on-year.

United's 3Q2012 financial results reflect management's declaration that the quarter was one of the toughest of the merger integration with Continental Airlines. The challenges were reflected in its modest USD6 million profit, and the carrier's continuing lacklusture unit revenue performance. But the carrier pledges that the challenges it faced with an IT systems cutover and aircraft redeployment that fuelled its weak performance have been met, and it expects customer sentiment to improve now that operational disruptions have abated.

The carrier's USD6 million profit was a 99% slide year-over-year. Excluding special items, the carrier recorded a profit of USD520 million. United also saw a significant 79% slide in operating income to USD200 million as expenses grew 5% to USD9.7 billion while total operating revenues fell 2.6% to USD9.9 billion.