TravelPerk's CEO and co-founder Avi Meir says air travel's loss could be rail's gain as business travel recovers
As
lockdowns and travel restrictions take tentative steps towards easing, we’re
starting to see the first signs of economies coming back to life.
Although
bookings across the board are still a fraction of what they were two months
ago, trends in our latest data offer up some fascinating insights as to what we
can expect from the recovery.
Before
Covid-19, we saw approximately three flight bookings for every train journey,
but I believe this is going to change.
The
coronavirus crisis has brought the airline industry to an abrupt halt and
Europe’s largest carriers are in a state of disarray.
Health
and safety measures at airports could strip away air travel’s efficiency
benefits, while social distancing measures onboard could force airlines to ramp
up fares dramatically.
Already
we have seen booking ratios turned on their head in Germany. Before the
pandemic it was two flight bookings to one rail journey, but now – perhaps not
surprisingly – we’re seeing four times as many rail journeys as flights.
The
shift might level out again as air travel recovers, but it will be slow.
Moreover, rail travel’s benefits continue to gain strength.
Not
only is it the more sustainable option, but it is also more convenient in many
cases, transporting passengers between city centres across Europe.
Indeed,
in France, rail-first is now policy: as part of its €7 billion bailout for Air
France, the government ordered the airline not to compete with the TGV rail
service on shorter routes.
Demand
for air will recover once social distancing measures are eased, but I suspect a
result of the pandemic will be that many travellers realise that rail is a good
alternative, especially for shorter routes.
Looking
at business travel’s wider recovery, we’re going to see an uneven healing
process shaped by both how nations and regions emerge from the grip of the
crisis and the subsequent establishing of travel ‘corridors’.
We’ve
seen this in action with the opening of a corridor between Baltic states Latvia,
Estonia and Lithuania (which has propelled the latter two destinations into our
top ten countries for booked business travel) and a Trans-Tasman corridor could
be next with negotiations between New Zealand and Australia ongoing.
Business
travel will continue to be dependent on these kinds of arrangements between
governments, but the UK’s u-turn on a quarantine exemption for French citizens
– which was subsequently reneged on the French side too – is a stark example of
how political and diplomatic horse-trading will affect the recovery of
international travel.
Despite this, I’m encouraged by some of the emerging
signs of recovery. The travel industry has a history of innovating to emerge
from crises, and I am confident it will do so again.