FOX ON FRIDAY
WYSK – What You Should Know. Statistics – Shock! Horror!
Most travel figures go up a bit or down a bit. Although even some of those moves are significant, there are occasionally the shock-horror types. These are generally prompted by a major event (such as Japan’s triple-hit in 2011) but many are not.
Here are a few recent ones you may not have noticed (in alphabetical order):
China waves; hello, bye-bye
China is causing waves again – up and down. YTD arrivals from China into:
-Hong Kong, up 6%, but only +1% in previous month, -10% the month before.
-Japan, up 105%! Despite their scrapping politicians, Chinese travellers want to go to Japan. And not necessarily diversion from MERS fears in Korea, because…
-Korea up 28%.
-Macau, down 3%. Related to China’s anti-corruption drive.
-Singapore, -9%. Same.
-Thailand, +96%! Partly dead-cat-bounce, but new practical facilitation, helped by lowered prices, and proximity (much growth from areas in China other than the big three – Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai).
Milan’s airports
What should be Milan’s main airport, #Malpensa, is losing share. Ten years ago it counted 60% of the region’s passengers. Now, 48%.
Dysfunction #SingaporeAirlines
A couple of weeks ago I wrote that SA by quoted-company regulations should be reporting traffic figures of its subsidiary #Scoot. Well, now it is; thankyou.
That’s the good news. The bad is the business is – to say the least – not encouraging. SA’s first no-frills-airline #Tiger is falling 9% YTD. Something has to give, and soon.
At SA’s other NFA, Scoot, growth is 11%, but as I noted before for the business it is in, and its relative newness, that should be at least 15%.
As an aside, note that Tiger was forced to give up some routes to help Scoot get enough traffic. How dumb is that (in operational terms)?
Even the main SA is falling 1%.
Tokyo’s airports
Since authorities changed policies and accepted international flights into Haneda, that’s where the growth is going. In Q1, #Haneda +48%, #Narita -12%. Haneda still has only 43% of the Narita total, but five years ago, it had only 20%! As many airlines do not like Narita – it is too far out of town and has only one runway for takeoff – will it fade further?
I think there is probably another year of these trends to go, and then the pattern will level out.
*Reports on this topic in our Travel Business Analyst newsletter contains some important additional observations on the data shown here.
The Fox
Remember, I’ll be famous after I’m dead.