I attended my first wedding in Singapore this week and what a joyous occasion it was. I had forgotten how raucous and noisy a Chinese wedding can be – yes, there were still rules around intermingling between tables and masks on (when not eating and drinking, rare moments indeed during a wedding banquet) – but for two hours or so, it felt like the good old days as a long-postponed family wedding finally went ahead.
An elegant and meaningful tea ceremony followed by speeches from the father of the bride, the best man, the bride and groom, and numerous toasts and “yum seng”, umpteenth photos, endless feasting … the restaurant manager told me it had been a while since such a joyous banquet had been held at their premises. It felt both like a family reunion as well as a wedding celebration because the bride (my niece) and groom had waited two years to return from New Zealand to Singapore to honour their parents.
As Singapore takes its first steps towards living with Covid, it seems we are also living it up like never before – and travelling. Try to book a pre-departure test these days (for countries that still need it) and all the slots are full, an indication of the travelling Singaporeans are doing.
Over the long weekend just past, nearly half a million travellers departed Singapore for Malaysia via land checkpoints. Passenger movement at Changi Airport rose to nearly 40 percent of pre-Covid levels in the end of April, more than double the 18 percent recorded in March.
As South-east Asia starts its travel recovery, the rest of the world is soaring ahead – and what a bounty of good news we got this week, as companies reported their first quarter results and IATA reported continuing recovery in its March 2022 data.
For a wrap of the good news:
Booking Holdings took in $27.3 billion in gross travel bookings in the first quarter of this year – an increase of 129% compared to Q1 2021 and the highest quarterly amount in the company’s history. Room nights booked in Q1 doubled compared to a year earlier, from 99 million in Q1 2021 to 198 million in the first quarter this year.
“Despite an uncertain macroeconomic environment, we have seen continued strengthening of global travel trends so far in the second quarter of 2022, and we are preparing for a busy summer travel season ahead,” says Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking Holdings, in this Phocuswire article. “I’m encouraged by how well our teams are executing to capture travel demand in this recovery environment and our progress in expanding our payments platform at Booking.com while we build towards our ‘Connected Trip’ vision.”
Airbnb revenue hit $1.5 billion for the January-March period for the first time in the company’s history. The home-sharing and alternative accommodation giant saw revenue increase by 70% year-over-year – 80% higher than the corresponding quarter in 2019 ($839 million), before its listing on the public markets.
Most interesting from this Phocuswire report is that 21% of gross nights booked in Q1 2022 were for stays of 28 days or more. This figure is up from 13% in 2019 and slightly down from the 24% in 2021. Almost half of all stays booked on the platform are for periods of at least one week. All global regions with the exception of Asia Pacific are seeing strong recovery rates in nights and experiences booked on the platform, with Latin America the standout part of the world with a 65% higher level in Q1 2022 compared to the corresponding quarter in 2019.
Sabre reported revenue gains across its travel solutions, distribution, IT solutions and hospitality for the first quarter of 2022. Total revenue for the company came in at $585 million versus $327 million year-on-year, with an operating loss of $80 million versus the $203 million loss in Q1 2021. Net income was reported as $42 million, which was boosted by the sale of AirCentre as well as increased Travel Solutions incentive expenses and Hospitality Solutions transaction-related costs, compared to the net loss of $266 million in Q1 2021.
A summary of IATA’s March 2022 data shows that total traffic in March 2022 (measured in revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs) was up 76.0% compared to March 2021. Although that was lower than the 115.9% rise in February year-over-year demand, volumes in March were the closest to 2019 pre-pandemic levels, at 41% below. International RPKs rose 285.3% versus March 2021, exceeding the 259.2% gain experienced in February versus the year-earlier period. Most regions boosted their performance compared to the prior month, led by carriers in Europe. March 2022 international RPKs were down 51.9% compared to the same month in 2019.
Of note: Asia Pacific airlines had a 197.1% rise in March traffic compared to March 2021, up over the 146.5% gain registered in February 2022 versus February 2021. While China and Japan remain restrictive to foreign visitors, other countries are becoming more relaxed, including South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand. Capacity rose 70.7% and the load factor was up 24.1 percentage points to 56.6%, the lowest among regions.
Expedia Group, kicking off its EXPLORE 22 conference in Las Vegas this week, also shared healthy revenues growth of 81% as it unveiled a new three-pronged strategy focused on the traveller, not customer.
Competing for attention this week too is news that Tripadvisor has named a new CEO, Matt Goldberg, taking over from founder Steve Kaufer, effective July 1. Goldberg most recently was executive vice president, North America and global operations at media buying platform The Trade Desk. Prior to that he has held executive roles at News Corp and Liberty Media Corporation’s QVC Group – Tripadvisor chairman Greg Maffei is president and CEO of Liberty Media Corporation. Goldberg is also founding director of Dataphilanthropy, a non-profit focused on building programs to apply data to better address and understand economic disparity.
Looks like travel is back, and travel companies are back in fighting form. And for the first time in a long while we in South-east Asia can celebrate together with the rest of the world. Now, we wait on our North Asian neighbours to join the rest of the pack. Then we can truly raise a glass and holler “Yum Seng” at the top of our lungs.
• Featured image credit: MykolaSenyuk/GettyImages
