The demand for air tickets has been described as “off the charts” in many places around the globe for people who have been home-bound for the past two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
What’s more, is that travellers are willing to pay top dollar for the chance to get away.
In April, air tickets from Singapore cost on average 27 per cent higher than their prices in 2019, a Bloomberg report said on Tuesday (June 7), quoting a study from the Mastercard Economics Institute.
But it’s hardly any better in other parts of the world.
In Australia, flight tickets cost 20 per cent more than they did before the pandemic.
Online travel platform Expedia showed that the average price for air tickets to Singaporeans’ top five destinations—Bangkok, Bali, Kuala Lumpur, Phuket, and Seoul—costs 20 per cent higher than they did in 2019, CNA reported last month.
Aside from the surge in demand for tickets due to pandemic restrictions easing, other factors have affected the price of airline fares.
The price of oil had been rising worldwide since last year but was affected even further by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
Unfortunately, the conflict, which has just seen its 100-day milestone, shows no sign of coming to a stop soon.
This has especially affected those who want to travel to Europe, as many flight routes have been changed to avoid the conflict zone.
The price of fuel can take up as much as 38 to 50 per cent of an airline’s operating costs.
Nevertheless, travel-hungry individuals are undeterred.
In its report, Bloomberg quoted Delta Air Lines Inc. CEO Ed Bastian is calling the demand “off the charts.”
“It’s coming with leisure, it’s coming with premium customers, it’s coming with business, it’s coming with international. It doesn’t matter what the category is,” he said at a conference recently.
There is even a name for cabin-fever beset travellers who appear to want to fly at all costs—“revenge travelers”.
Bloomberg quoted the sector lead for travel in Asia-Pacific at Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Hermione Joye, as defining this type of traveller as “an individual that has been emotionally affected by the lockdowns and has craved travel over the last two years and they’ve dreamt about it. They are very spontaneous.”
The good news is that air ticket prices are expected to come down sooner or later—perhaps after the next few months, an industry expert told CNA last month.
Mr Lee Lik Hsin, the commercial executive vice-president for Singapore Airlines, said, “Airfares are a function of demand and supply. The reality is that flights for the next two months or so are quite booked up for many sectors, and so in those sectors, you will see higher prices.
If you go beyond two months, the prices come back down. In fact, we regularly conduct promotions to try and get early bookings and early sales. So there are actually attractive prices out there in the marketplace; it really depends on when you need to travel and where you need to travel.”
/TISG