AMSTERDAM--Airline bookings to St. Maarten dropped by 14 per cent in the period January-February 2016 following the international travel alert due to the Zika virus.
St. Maarten is one of the many Caribbean destinations that have been adversely affected by the travel alert of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the United States Government on January 16, 2016, and the February 1, 2016, announcement of the World Health Organisation (WHO) that Zika is an international public health emergency.
ForwardKeys, a subsidiary of the British company Forward Data, that compiles big data and business intelligence for the travel industry by analysing 14 million reservation transactions a day and monitoring more than 200,000 online and offline travel agencies worldwide, on February 19, 2016, published an overview of the impact of the Zika virus on international bookings for affected areas.
It was concluded that flight bookings to destinations that have been hit by the Zika virus in the Caribbean and Latin America have been consistently slowing following the US Government travel warning and the WHO declaration. The data from January 15 to February 10, 2016, were compared to the same period last year.
Overall, the number of bookings from Europe to Zika affected areas dropped by 5 per cent, while bookings from North America went down by 3 per cent. Some destinations are less affected by the current situation than others, which has to do with other, previous negative trends.
In the Caribbean, hardest hit with long-haul source markets, mostly Europe and the US, the most affected were the US Virgin Islands (down by 27 per cent), Martinique (-24 per cent), Haiti (-24 per cent), Puerto Rico (-22 per cent) and Guadeloupe (-21 per cent). Bookings to St. Maarten decreased by 14 per cent, while the number of bookings to Aruba and Bonaire were reduced by 9 and 6.4 per cent respectively.
Bookings to Guyana and Suriname decreased by respectively 24 and 22 per cent. Jamaica and the Dominican Republic have not been significantly affected: bookings to these two countries decreased by a mere 2 per cent.
A percentage for Curaçao was not given due to the influence of the excessive number of bookings from Venezuela to the island which don’t correspond with the number of flights between the two countries. However, when deducting the Venezuela bookings, it could be concluded that the number of bookings to Curaçao also significantly decreased. No percentage was given.
Bookings for the coming three months, compared to last year, overall showed an increase to several countries, but not to all. Puerto Rico (-18 per cent), the US Virgin Islands (-23 per cent) and Suriname (-18 per cent) will continue to be adversely affected up to May 31, 2016.
The negative effects in the months up to May seemed to be limited for Guadeloupe with minus 4 per cent and Martinique minus 2 per cent. On the other hand, bookings to Guyana in the next three months went up by 40 per cent.
The Dominican Republic will also see an increase of 3 per cent, while Jamaica will remain in the red with minus 3 per cent. Figures of the Dutch Caribbean for the next three months were not supplied by ForwardKeys.
Airline companies operating flights to the Dutch Caribbean cautiously reacted to the figures. A Royal Dutch Airlines KLM spokesperson said that the airline didn’t respond to figures relating to individual destinations. The spokesperson did say that KLM had barely noticed the effects of bookings to Zika affected areas in the past few months.
TUI didn’t report a significant decrease in bookings to the Dutch Caribbean. The spokesperson clarified that TUI mostly sold packages, and not single airline tickets. However, the spokesperson did say that the market to the islands was unstable with large number of bookings in certain periods and low bookings in other weeks.
