Planning a holiday in Europe this year has become akin to a military operation — or perhaps a game of sandcastle roulette.
The various testing and quarantine restrictions across the region are certainly deterring many travellers: international tourist arrivals in Europe, the lifeblood for many Mediterranean countries, were down 81% in the first three months of 2021 compared with 2020, according to the UN World Tourism Organisation. The European Travel Commission, a non-profit organisation which promotes Europe as a tourist destination, predicts a recovery in the second half of the year, but only to 51% of pre-pandemic levels.
It’s not just holidaymakers though who are rushing to change flights in response to ever-shifting government travel recommendations this summer. Airlines such as Britain’s easyJet have had to become much more nimble in route and capacity planning. As chief commercial officer Sophie Dekkers notes, the low-cost carrier has been working with last-minute changes to travel restrictions for several months now. “We have become very practised at this and extremely agile as a result,” she tells us. “We’ve put in place the flexibility to rapidly ramp up to capture and serve that demand, wherever it appears.”
For example, easyJet has reduced the time it takes to put new routes on sale from weeks to a matter of hours. It’s a major team effort that involves airports, slots, crewing and marketing. But with the pandemic, some people are now working in cross-functional roles so that the teams can collaborate more quickly in response to changing restrictions. “Typically, the process of putting new routes on sale takes at least eight weeks,” Dekkers explains. “Following the latest green list update, we were able to put over 100,000 additional seats on existing and new routes to those European destinations on our network including Malta and the Balearics, within several hours.”
And if the news is not so good, the airline now has the methods in place to react fast. Dekkers says when the government unexpectedly removed Portugal from its green travel list, easyJet was able to add 1,000 additional seats back to the UK in the few days available before Portugal became an amber-list country, and with it additional quarantine requirements back in Britain. To meet that demand, EasyJet put on an additional four flights to the UK and up-gauged eight flights on existing routes over three days to larger aircraft.
Airlines and the travel industry came under fire last year over delays in refunding flights and holidays that were cancelled as a result of the pandemic. One measure that is helping easyJet deal with cancellations and refund requests as restrictions change is putting its schedule for the summer 2022 season on sale far earlier than in previous year. This means customers can more easily move bookings cancelled as a result of COVID-19 to next year. This has “significantly” reduced customer propensity to ask for refunds, easyJet touted at its first-half results in May. The decision to do so marked the first time that easyJet has had four seasons available for sale at the same time. Low cost carriers traditionally have two seasons on sale at once, the current one and the next one, a strategy originally put in place to avoid passengers booking flights for the wrong year.
Dekkers did not provide any details on the costs of coping with the changing restrictions, but it’s certainly not going to be helping the bottom line. easyJet has already raised over £5.5 billion ($7.6 billion) in liquidity since the crisis began and slumped to a headline loss of £701 million for the first six months of its current financial year, compared with a £193 million loss the previous year.
However, for some companies, dealing with the uncertainty is too much.
Online sun and sand holiday firm On the Beach is currently only taking bookings for September 2021 onwards, saying things are just too uncertain around testing, quarantine periods, local restrictions and the UK’s own traffic light system. It states on its website: “Plenty of other travel companies will be more than happy to take your money, even though they’re not sure yet what the additional costs or inconvenience might be. We’re not.”
Still, with airlines desperate to salvage something of this summer to offset the fixed costs of keeping aircraft maintained and crews fresh, suspending operations altogether is simply not an option.
There are some new digital tools that easyJet is using to cope with the changing landscape.
The airline has a COVID-19 Travel Hub on its website for customers, with a live digital map showing restrictions across Europe. Dekkers says easyJet partnered with travel technology provider Smartvel to develop the tool, which provides up-to-date information on entry restrictions, quarantine measures, tests and the various forms and apps that people need to travel at the moment.
Along with a greater focus on travel restrictions, the airline is also keeping a closer eye on what destinations its passengers are interested in.
“We’ve also invested in Google Analytics to ensure that we can track what customers are searching for to use this as an early indicator of likely demand changes to help inform our network decisions,” Dekkers adds. “We’ve continually reviewed our flying programme and flexed our operations to respond to demand where we are seeing it.”
One thing is clear. A pent-up demand for travel is there, with people rushing to book flights for a summer getaway each time the advice changes. But with national restrictions continuing to change in Europe on a weekly, if not daily basis, it seems that airlines and travel providers in Europe will need the tools that allow for faster and more flexible route management for a while longer yet.
Author: John Walton
Published: 5th August 2021
Photo credit: Ben Queenborough/PinPep
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