Singapore – Hong Kong

Bookings soar on air travel bubble.

Research undertaken by ForwardKeys, the travel analytics company, reveals that the announcement, on 15 October, that Hong Kong and Singapore have reached an in-principle agreement to establish a bilateral Air Travel Bubble (ATB), which would allow leisure travel between them to restart in November, triggered an immediate release of pent-up demand.

In the week that followed, flight searches for travel from Singapore to Hong Kong, which had been flat since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, soared to 50% of 2019 levels, while bookings jumped to 30%.

The main focus of travellers’ interest is the Christmas holiday period, with the peak dates for flight searches to Hong Kong covering the weeks of 10, 17 and 24 December. When it comes to tickets, travel has been booked throughout December, with 18–25 December being the peak travel dates. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of people, over 80%, will be travelling for leisure or to visit friends and relatives.

Deeper analysis by ForwardKeys suggests that tourism-dependent retailers based in Hong Kong are likely to be significantly happier than their counterparts in Singapore; because the immediate uplift in flight bookings from Singapore to Hong Kong is more than three times higher than in the opposite direction.

On 23 March, Singapore and Hong Kong announced that their borders would be closed to all foreign travellers. Since then, it has been almost impossible to fly between the two places (or anywhere else) and hardly anybody has been searching or booking travel.

https://forwardkeys.com

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