Corporate Travel Analysis Reports For Europe/MEA

Meliá Hotels International has opened the INNSiDE by Meliá Bangkok Sukhumvit property, which joins a unique collection of cutting-edge hotels in Thailand's capital city.

The new property is just one of a number of new properties that are being opened by the hospitality group, with recent openings and announcements including the debut of the Gran Meliá brand in Vietnam in Nha Trang, a new Meliá Collection offering in Milan, a new Spanish signing in Lloret de Mar and the opening of the first ZEL brand property in partnership with tennis player Rafa Nadal in Mallorca.

Insights from STR, the data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights provide for the global hospitality industry, shows that more than four in five global hotel markets are continuing to report growth in revenue per available room (RevPAR).

The specialist's global "bubble chart" update as of 17-Jun-2023 noted that 85% of global markets experienced growth in RevPAR when compared to 2019. This reflects the same level as the previous update, which marked the largest share of markets with growth since the beginning of the pandemic.

New research from the German travel association Deutschen Reiseverband (DRV) has highlighted that business travellers are increasingly considering environmental factor when selecting and booking their corporate travel.

Its recently published 'Chefsache Business Travel' study, revealed an increasing number of business travellers and companies are attaching importance to being as ecologically sustainable as possible when travelling.

Radisson Hotel Group continues its ambitious growth in Africa with the signing of seven new hotels, adding over 1,400 rooms to its African portfolio.

The new hotels expand the Group's brands, spanning from upscale to premium luxury lifestyle with a new market entry in Gambia and the introduction of new brands in key markets with the first Radisson Collection in Nigeria and Egypt, the first Radisson RED hotel in Nigeria, and the introduction of the Radisson brand in Kenya.

If the next time you board an aircraft, and it appears a little old or tired, you can probably blame COVID-19.

Due to the pandemic's devastating impact on air travel and the subsequent uncertainty about when travel would return, western original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) cut aircraft production dramatically.

From a peak of 1,826 commercial aircraft deliveries globally in 2018 (the year before Boeing's disasters with the 737 MAX), output of airliners fell precipitously, with just 820 aircraft getting to customers in 2020.

IndiGo and Airbus grabbed headlines on the opening day of the 2023 Paris Airshow, with the Indian LCC placing an order with Airbus for 500 A320 family aircraft.

According to Airbus this is the "record for the biggest single purchase agreement in the history of commercial aviation". The deal takes the total number of Airbus aircraft ordered by IndiGo to 1,330.

After a slow start to 2022, traffic at European airports bounced back strongly through the year thanks to a strong northern summer travel period.

At European airports, total passenger throughput nearly doubled in 2022. This occurred despite the nearly unprecedented operational issues experienced through the peak summer travel months (and again at the start of the northern winter period), along with near record oil prices, a war in Eastern Europe, and an uncertain economic outlook denting consumer confidence.

According to ACI Europe, total traffic through its European member airports finished 21% below prepandemic levels. Encouragingly, passenger volumes in Dec-2022 were around 86% of Dec-2019 levels. As of Jan-2023, 42% of European airports had returned to pre-pandemic traffic volumes. The outlook for the full year is for traffic at somewhere around 90% of pre-pandemic levels.

Recently CAPA reported on Airports Council International (ACI) - North America's habitual annual call for more funding for airport infrastructure.

Airports Council International is a trade body that acts as a lobby group. Now it is the turn of the Asia Pacific division (ACI AP) to enter the fray, but on a different topic - namely, the dichotomy between a stiff rise in airfares in the region (and the Middle East) versus continuing financial pain for airports.

Indeed, ACI AP's message echoes one made by the UK's Heathrow Airport a short while ago: that it is unreasonable that airports anywhere should be regulated on the charges they can apply while - generally speaking - airlines cannot be regulated on the ticket prices they charge their customers, which is left in the nebulous domain of 'supply and demand'.

ACI AP does note an improvement in airports' finances from the third quarter of 2022, and especially so in the final one, and with China coming out of its COVID-19 shell there is some evidence available from airport (group) financial statements that CAPA is aware of that the situation is uneven, and perhaps not quite as bad as ACI AP paints it.

The region's continuing recovery rests firmly with what happens now in China, for sure, and in many different ways.

US carriers accounted for all three of the largest airline globally (measured in seats) as of the end of Mar-2023 and the start of the 2023 summer schedule.

American Airlines was the largest airline by capacity, offering just short of 5 million seats per week.

It was followed by Delta Air Lines and low cost carrier Southwest Airlines. United Airlines was the fifth largest carrier by seats.

Out with the old, in with the new - has there been a structural change in the way corporations approach, approve and value business travel? Do we expect business travel to ever come back to 'normal'? Has a new equilibrium been reached because of COVID-19?

These were all questions that were discussed during a special business travel session at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit 2023 in Budapest, Hungary in Mar-2023.