Australia – New Zealand

The travel ban between Australia and New Zealand has been lifted with large numbers travelling between the two Commonwealth countries cut-off from the World’s mainstream and with very strict Covid-19 entry requirements.

Research undertaken by ForwardKeys, which has the most up-to-date and comprehensive flight booking data available, has quicky revealed that two-way traffic is rapidly returning.

On 6 April, New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced that quarantine-free travel would again be possible from 19 April. In the week that followed, bookings immediately jumped, with the total number of tickets issued for bidirectional travel between the neighbouring countries reaching 49% of those issued in the equivalent week in 2019, the last “normal” travel year.

As at 12 April, the balance of bookings was strongly in the direction of Australia to New Zealand rather than the other way round. Looking at total air tickets issued for travel between the two countries, the volume from Australia to New Zealand recovered to 69% of those seen in the same period in 2019, while the opposite direction (New Zealand to Australia) recovered to 27% of 2019 levels. Out of all tickets issued between Australia and New Zealand, 73% are from Australia going to New Zealand, while 27% are from New Zealand towards Australia.

Analysis of traveller profile shows leisure travel leading the way and business travel lagging: 91% of bookings were for leisure travel and 9% for business. However, benchmarked against the equivalent period in 2019, business bookings were further behind, 75.9%, compared with leisure, which were 68.8% behind.

https://forwardkeys.com

Index/Home page
 

OUR READERS' FINEST WORDS (All times and dates are GMT)

All comments are filtered to exclude any excesses but the Editor does not have to agree with what is being said. 100 words maximum