Corporate Travel Analysis Reports For South Pacific

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to Australia's first ever, WiFi Wars. The ultimate battle for supremacy and gloating rights as the inflight entertainment leader in the skies - well the Australian skies anyway. In the red corner, we have the darling of Australian aviation, the flying kangaroo, Qantas. And in the blue corner, Virgin family alumni and LCC turned full service carrier, Virgin Australia.

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The regulation of short term holiday letting has been an increasing hot topic around the world, with the Silicon Valley darling, Airbnb, at the centre of the fight. In fact, many of Airbnb's recent efforts have been concentrated on meeting and fighting local government regulations. Results of a NSW Government inquiry into the adequacy of the regulation of short term holiday letting in NSW were finally released overnight, after almost 18 months.

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.

Virgin Australia on 30-Mar-2017 announced the launch of its new Economy X product, making it the only airline with an enhanced economy domestic offering.

The backlash of yesterday's United Airlines debacle is still being felt around the world. Social media and the mainstream press have crucified United for how it has dealt with the situation - and rightfully so. Hashtags have started trending, memes are endless and in depth editorial pieces are everywhere (yes, we are guilty of that too).

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.

Indonesia has taken a step backwards from liberalisation by forcing Singapore Airlines (SIA) to delay the launch of services between Jakarta and Sydney. Garuda has benefited from the delay and is adding capacity on the route.