Leaders of three major business travel players have downplayed the impact of an impending recession on the sector and claimed their respective companies were seeing no signs of the fragile economic landscape impacting their business.
Speaking at the GBTA Europe & VDR convention in Brussels yesterday, Harry Hohmeister, member of the board, global markets and network, Lufthansa Group, said: “I would not be pessimistic for 2023. The German press are telling us to expect a soft recession but in reality this third quarter is performing much better than a lot of people expected.”
He continued: “Before we talk about economic headwinds let’s talk about tailwinds because bookings and revenues are running stable and I do not see any decline over the next three quarters regarding demand structure.
“I do not believe any forecast which is more than three months away from here and we should not be talking ourselves down,” added Hohmeister.
“There might be a recession but what will come out of it that we have not already experienced? We have a solid billing sheet, a lot of cash, and therefore it will be a different fight to the Corona crisis. If you take away four per cent or eight per cent of demand – the worst recession we have seen before – then I think that would be a piece of cake [compared to the Covid crisis].”
Chris Galanty, CEO of corporate, Flight Centre Travel Group, said: “We don’t want to talk ourselves into a recession. People only travel for business because it’s important and that’s not going to change. It’s critical to how the modern world functions.”
Galanty said transactions at both FCTG brands, FCM and Corporate Traveller, are now back to 2019 levels but admitted he had previously been pessimistic about the speed of recovery.
“There’s no doubt there are economic pressures, and we live in a more uncertain world and that’s the reality. You can’t change the uncertainty, it’s how you deal with it,” he added. “The most important thing we need to do is continue to communicate the importance of business travel.”
Like FCTG, Hohmeister said Lufthansa Group’s corporate recovery was also ahead of the 65 per cent figure projected by the GBTA globally for 2022, while Charlie Sultan, president of Concur Travel at SAP Concur, said he too was seeing “numbers a little more positive than that”.
Sultan added: “There is no lack of desire to travel and we are not seeing any signs of demand dropping off.”