BUSINESS NEWS


John Bevan: ‘We hope business [next year] will be half of last year’s and we’ll see a decent recovery the year after that’


Bevan: Travel volumes set to change for ever


There will be ‘no return to normal’, dnata Travel Europe chief tells Ian Taylor


The industry is in for a tough 12 months with “no return to normal” and may have to live with reduced demand for years, dnata Travel Europe chief executive John Bevan has warned. Dnata is in the final stages of


making hundreds of redundancies, and Bevan told Travel Weekly: “The next two to three years are going to be extremely difficult. We’re going to have to learn to live with Covid. “It’s very sad for people who have left or are leaving – I didn’t come into


40 10 SEPTEMBER 2020


this to get rid of people. [But] we’re certain life will not return to normal for a while. Next year will be tough. We hope business will be half of last year’s and we’ll see a decent recovery the year after that. “We’ve taken a lot of cost out.


We’ve restructured – we were restructuring anyway, but we went in a lot harder. “We have shrunk the business


as far as we can and, as and when business comes back, we’ll rebuild.” But Bevan warned: “The volume


of travel will change for ever. We got to a place in the UK where travel was something everybody could afford. This [crisis] has made a lot of people think. Some of the emails I’ve had about refunds have made me think ‘can people really afford this?’” He suggests: “People will [regard


booking] travel differently. They’ll think ‘something will crop up and I’ll be left waiting for my money’.”


Continued on page 38 travelweekly.co.uk


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