The price of domestic airfares may have risen last year but corporate international fares remained flat and leisure travellers tended to pay around 4 percent less for long-haul tickets.
These insights are all part of a hot off the press 4D FOCUS AUSTRALIA Aviation and Airfare Analysis put together by Flight Centre Travel Group’s 4th Dimension Business Travel Consulting division.
The report compares tickets purchased from Flight Centre’s corporate and retail businesses in 2017 compared to 2016 and 2015 airfares.
So here is the down low.
Domestic travel is getting more expensive with corporate and leisure ticket prices spiking 3.5 percent and 8.9 percent in 2017 respectively.
General Manager of 4D Felicity Burke, said the increase was driven by strong consumer demand, steady tourism growth and gradual increases in carrier published fares.
“Both Qantas Airways and Virgin Australia increased their published airfares during the year, with the largest percentage increases on the economy class restricted airfares,”
General Manager of 4D Felicity Burke
She said carrier-driven increases pushed the cheaper ‘leisure traveller’ airfares upwards to the range of 2.5 percent to eight percent.
If you were flying international last year, airfares were in your favour.
International economy fares for corporates remained flat in 2017 and leisure travellers had another year of excellent value, low-priced long-haul fares.
With 62 airlines now servicing the international landscape, Felicity said Australian travellers continued to be ‘spoilt for choice with carriers, flight frequencies and in-flight product’.
Flight Centre’s Managing Director, Graham Turner believes the golden era of travel continued to shine brightly for travellers.
“Competitive international airfares, new direct flights such as the Perth to London, more frequent services, continually improved in-flight amenities plus unprecedented discounting on some routes are but a few of the positive takeaways from 2017.”
Flight Centre’s Managing Director, Graham Turner
He warned that if the price of oil continued to rise this could potentially mean ticket prices may increase in the near term.
Despite this, he is confident we’re still going to see some excellent value across the international and domestic landscape as airlines compete for both the corporate and leisure dollar.
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