Travel Week in Review – December 1st, 2023

Following September’s seasonal decline, total October 2023 U.S. air ticket sales fell 2 percent year over year and 5 percent month over month to $7.2 billion, according to Airlines Reporting Corp.’s latest report. Total passenger trips were up 4 percent year over year to 21.7 million but were down about 2 percent from September 2023. U.S. domestic trips increased 5 percent compared with a year prior to 14.2 million but were down 1 percent sequentially. International trips increased 2 percent from. Read More…

Holiday travel season is here and many people are dusting off their suitcases. For those who haven’t traveled in a while, heading to the airport can seem daunting, but a little planning and some know-how can help make the trip relatively smooth. There’s some good news for travelers this year: While it’s expected to be a hectic holiday season, airlines have become more reliable in the past year, Haley Berg, lead economist at Hopper… Read More…

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents about 26,000 American Airlines flight attendants, submitted a request to the National Mediation Board to be released from federal mediation, the union announced on Monday. Should the request be granted, it would “start the clock on a 30-day cooling-oof period,” after which the flight attendants would be free to strike against American. In August, 99.5 percent of APFA members voted to authorize a strike, with 93 percent participation. Read More…

Global funding of travel technology companies has slowed to its weakest level in nearly a decade, though mergers and acquisitions in the broader travel space have proliferated in recent years, analysts said during the recent Phocuswright Conference. Phocuswright’s The State of Travel Funding 2023 report, published this month and which monitors more than 4,600 travel companies, showed that funding through the third quarter this year has been $3.1 billion and is on pace to be less than $4 billion this year. Read More…

Is Japan tourism set to surge? It certainly looks that way as the Japanese National Tourism Organization (JNTO) revealed that Japan has won the prestigious title of top destination worldwide in the Condé Nast Traveler’s 2023 Reader’s Choice Awards/ The prestigious recognition coincides with a period of growth and recover in Japan’s tourism industry, rebounding from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Arrival numbers from Canada have surpassed pre-pandemic 2019 levels and overall North America is projected… Read More…