Providing a vital platform for the community to collaborate, our second virtual Routes Reconnected event reunited the world s route development professionals, facilitating meaningful conversations and a comprehensive programme of actionable insight to help support the industry through its recovery.
Throughout four packed event days, 1,700+ attendees took part in more than 1,500 one-to-one and multi-user meetings and gained core knowledge via three days of exclusive content that will inform critical future business strategies.
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1. The recovery will outperform IATA’s 43% prediction
Earlier this month, IATA predicted that revenue passenger kilometers for 2021 would reach 43% of the levels seen in 2019.
However, our experts were more optimistic, with three of the four speakers expecting the market to perform better.
The Points Guy’s senior director of content Nicky Kelvin said the recovery seen in the US would lead the resurgence.
“I m looking at the US, and it s rapid increase in pretty much everything, and I m hopeful that the recovery will be better than forecast,” he said.
Fellow panelist, ASM managing director David Stroud, said he expected the market to be “just a little better… shades of better” than predicted.
Chilean carrier JetSMART is flying more routes currently than before the COVID-19 pandemic started a sign that the LCC’s business model is working in South America, CEO Estuardo Ortiz said.
Speaking to the Routes Reconnected conference, Ortiz confirmed JetSMART is now flying 62 routes, though frequencies have been reduced to many destinations. He added that the airline sees plenty of room for growth, particularly as South America emerges from the pandemic, because JetSMART is tapping into a population that is just starting to view air travel as a viable option.
“About 20% of our passengers weren’t flying on any carrier before we entered the market” in 2017, Ortiz said, adding that these passengers either traveled by bus or simply didn’t travel much at all.
The future of business travel, the importance of cargo on route networks, and a call to increase support for airports all feature in our round-up of key quotes from Routes Reconnected.
The travel and tourism industry must provide the answers in the recovery from COVID-19, but its fragmentated approach still threatens to undermine progress.
That was the view of tourism experts who took part in a Routes Reconnected panel session focusing on demand stimulation.
Greek tourism minister Harry Theocharis, who also chairs a United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) technical committee exploring different national approaches, outlined how important international “trust and coordination” will be for the industry’s recovery.
“Tourism is an international activity and those are the two pillars of success if we are to somehow find a pathway to restart,” said Thoecharis.