Covid vaccines are underway with some 5.5 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses administrated worldwide and roughly 50% being administrated in China and India alone. Globally, consumers are now looking for a break from the lockdowns and are starting to feel more comfortable venturing out to travel again – where travel restrictions allow.
As the pent-up demand for travel increases in locations such as Europe and the Americas, the industry is starting to make its way towards a recovery. However, recovery in Asia Pacific continues to be slow due to remaining travel restrictions, significant quarantines and a slower uptake of COVID-19 vaccinations versus other regions.
As we delve even deeper into specific areas of travel recovery, such as short-haul versus long-haul and business versus leisure travel, a new study conducted by Collinson and CAPA – Centre for Aviation, featuring responses from over 330 travel experts globally, reveals further differences in recovery levels.
57% of APAC respondents expect short-haul leisure travel to return to 2019 levels in 2022. In comparison, when we look at long-haul leisure travel, the results were more mixed; with one-quarter of respondents expecting 41-60% recovery of 2019 levels next year.
Additionally, the outlook for business/corporate travel looks to be weaker than that of leisure travel, with only 35% of APAC respondents expecting short-haul business travel to recover to 60% of 2019 levels in 2022.
As vaccine programmes continue to be rolled out and more travel bubbles are established, businesses must look to evolve existing meeting and travel protocols in a timely fashion – both to ensure that their people feel protected and comfortable, and to meet corporate duty of care requirements.
Speak to us to know more, including how the new ISO31030 travel risk management standard has made corporate travel a core C-Suite agenda topic.
