Decoding trends with Travelport

The past few weeks have seen an upward trend in terms of bookings for hotels and flights. Travelport has been developing a confidence index to help travel agents, airlines and other stakeholders to understand the trends. Kathryn Wallington, Head of Account Management, Middle East & Africa for Travelport shares some of the key drivers.

Shehara Rizly

Could you share some of the latest trends after the ease of lockdown and opening of borders?

We recently developed the Travelport Confidence Index, which is designed to help travel agents, airlines and hotel operators understand where confidence in travel is starting to return across the world. The proprietary algorithm calculates weighted metrics covering air and hotel search patterns and flight bookings. Scores are a relative measure of travel demand, comparing each individual country’s proclivity to travel relative to other countries. These are updated weekly, based on the past seven days of data from a total of 90 countries.

Looking at July 2020 as a whole, the countries in the Middle East and North Africa that had the highest Travelport Confidence Index Scores were Iraq (34), Turkey (33), Lebanon (32), Iran (31), Tunisia (30), UAE (25), Qatar (21), Egypt (20), Bahrain (18) and Morocco (17). While it’s impossible to predict exactly what the future will look like, the travel industry is incredibly resilient, and it will recover. Business travellers will return to visiting customers, and leisure travellers will find that urge to explore, and the data is bearing this out. We are continuing to invest in our business so that we are poised to take full advantage when travel returns.

Are there more bookings on inbound or outbound travel?

Looking at outbound travel from Dubai, in July 2020, the destinations that recorded the highest volume of flight bookings were Lahore, Karachi, Dhaka, Islamabad and Manila. When it comes to inbound travel to Dubai, in July 2020, the cities with the highest volume of flight bookings to the emirate were Islamabad, Lahore, Manchester, Manila and London.

Any recent traveller behaviour patterns that are different than before?

One of the most prominent changes we are seeing is a shortening of the flight booking window. For example, in the UAE, the booking window shortened from 22 days in July 2019 to 12 days in July 2020.

Are travellers today more conscious about safety?

Safety is understandably front of mind for travellers right now. To have the confidence to travel, especially internationally, we’re seeing that travellers want to know a wide variety of safety measures are in place throughout the travel journey. This means the industry needs to work together to not only implement a wide array of measures but to ensure they are collectively communicated to travellers.