IN a new Centre for Aviation (CAPA) and Collinson Report, sentiment among insiders is muted on the prospects of a travel recovery, but there is still much to be done to prepare for travel’s eventual return.
In a survey of C-Suiters, executives and senior managers from the airlines, airports, and aviation suppliers in APAC, 65% of respondents are projecting a return to “normal” travel (2019 levels of activity) in 2023 or later.
This tracks with global sentiment, where 67% of respondents agree that travel will not return till 2023 or later.
However, the type of travel will matter, as respondents believe short-haul and leisure travel/visiting friends and relatives will recover much more quickly. 71% of global respondents think this category could recover solidly to 2019 levels, with a full third (36%) of respondents projecting a recovery of 81%+ of 2019 levels by 2022.
Respondents in APAC are slightly more cautious, with just over a quarter (26%) expecting to see that 81%+ recovery of 2019 levels, and 57% believing in a solid recovery within the category (61%+ of 2019 levels) though that sentiment may have been dimmed by the rash of new outbreaks and control measures that swept through the APAC region in April, when the survey was conducted.
In short-haul business travel in APAC, only 35% of respondents are forecasting a solid recovery to 2019 levels by 2022. That number drops off still further in long-haul where only 20% of the executives surveyed were expecting a solid recovery by 2022.
Travel is safe, but vaccine inequality hampers herd immunity
While most industry experts (89%) believe it is actually safe to travel, vaccine inequality and vaccine hesitancy remain concerns.
Only 16% of APAC respondents believed that most developed countries will achieve herd immunity by 2022, 30% were optimistic that the US, UK, and a select few developed nations could meet this threshold, and 27% predicted an alternative scenario, where only a handful of small countries had reached herd immunity, leaving the rest of the world (including US/UK/Europe) still struggling.
Looking toward reopening, some concerns remain
As the reopening of travel is phased in, there are likely to be some sticking points.
Only 2% of respondents expect any kind of easing of aviation market access arrangements through 2021.
While more than half (53%) expect to see robust testing protocols persist until end 2022, and nearly a quarter (23%) think protocols will remain central to travel at least until 2024.
On the issue of vaccine passports, opinions were more varied. Although two-thirds of respondents (67%) felt vaccine passports to be of vital importance, the other third felt they were either unimportant (25%) because governments would allow access with or without them, or irrelevant (8%) in the face of other issues like the delayed mutual recognition of vaccines.
Other obstacles to reopening included fraud in Covid-19 testing and vaccine passports, something cited as being of concern to 66% of respondents, and the continued enforcement of onerous quarantine measures, which 23% of experts believe will remain in force beyond 2021 despite vaccinations and testing.
Being a traveller’s companion
The survey also surfaced trends that industry experts were looking toward as priorities in post-Covid travel.
Covid-19 test booking emerged a key issue, with 30% of respondents identifying this as a key ancillary service for post-Covid travel, followed closely by seat upgrades (28%).
New concerns about traveller well-being also emerged, and while only 4% of respondents felt if was physically unsafe to travel, 70% acknowledged that travel would take a new toll on mental well-being by being more stressful.
To help travellers deal with the stressors associated with “new travel”, executives should take heed of the 87% of global travellers who specifically identified access to socially distanced spaces and the chance to be away from crowds as key factors in their airport experience.
• Featured image credit: Travelarium/Getty Images
