Australia’s newest carrier Bonza, has launched its group bookings arm for reservations of 10 or more travellers.
With the new service, event planners and other group bookers will have access to Bonza’s dedicated Group Travel Champions for tailored itineraries and bookings.
Among its features, Bonza’s new service will provide quotes to travel planners with group bookings, with each quote including 23 kgs of checked baggage, eight kilos of carryon and options to choose seats.
Planners must pay a 25 per cent deposit within a week of booking, while final names and payment are due 30 days before departure.
For added flexibility, Bonza allows name changes on bookings at no additional cost up to two days before the departure. Planners can make payments via bank transfer or credit card, providing organisations and groups with extra payment options.
Bonza CEO Tim Jordan said the airline was “thrilled to bolster and formalise our group booking capabilities at Bonza”.
“We have already seen healthy demand for group bookings as more people are choosing to travel to regional locations for business events,” he said.
“There’s also a very healthy appetite to travel Bonza for sporting events and in fact, one of our first-ever bookings when we first went on sale in January was for 550 netball players travelling to Townsville for a tournament and we’re humbled to see them return again for next year’s event.”
Bonza says it is also seeing a rise in short, staff work trips as the holiday season nears, including to destinations like Cairns, Sunshine Coast, and the Gold Coast.
“We are hearing from a number of organisations who are choosing to celebrate the end of the year with a trip across our network for the same price as a traditional restaurant booking or catered event,” Jordan said.
Launch sale
To mark the launch of the new groups arm, the low-cost carrier is also offering travellers 20 per cent off more than 300,000 flights from November to March.
Until 23 October, event planners can use the promo code TAKEOFF20 when contacting Bonza’s Group Travel Champions at groups@flybonza.com to activate the discount.
Travel is for 10 November-13 December 2023, 16 January-6 March 2024 and 13-27 March 2024.
Jordan told Karryon in a June interview the amount of interest in group and event bookings had “pleasantly surprised” the airline.
“And that is continuing to grow, which is really encouraging,” he said.
In an interview with Karryon when the carrier launched earlier in the year, Bonza Chief Commercial Officer Carly Povey said the airline had already seen a strong interest in group and event travel, which represents opportunities for agents.
Jordan later said, “indeed, travel agents are an important part of our proposition to the market and our distribution to the market”.
He added that “we have had more than 1,000 travel agents sign up with us”.
