News 07.11.18
Consumer law ‘damages airlines’
Edward Robertson
EU regulations designed to protect the consumer could end up doing more harm than good.
That was the warning from easyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren during an onstage interview with JLS Consulting director John Strickland yesterday.
Lundgren said airlines are often left paying out large sums to consumers for delayed or cancelled flights following circumstances “not of their making”. And he argued such costs may have been instrumental in
driving some airlines into bankruptcy, adding if the process continued it could lead to fewer airlines operating in Europe, and ultimately result in more expensive flights. Lundgren said that while he respected the rights of European air traffic controllers to strike, he hoped to see the EU devise a continent- wide solution to solve the problem, which he pointed out often cost easyJet more than just money. “The majority of the disruption we have is caused by actions outside our control; because we refund the customer 100% when it happens,
[they] think it is our fault – and this is something I’m quite upset about.” Lundgren suggested a European- wide agreement would be one way of solving the problem.
Meanwhile, Lundgren said he had no plans to enter the long- haul arena while there were still opportunities to grow in the short- haul aviation market.
He added that despite being Europe’s second-largest airline, easyJet still maintains only a 10% share of the European market. “From our perspective, we simply don’t want to go into the long-haul market ourselves,” he said. “We see so many airline operators in the existing market so we still have a long way to go.”
Lundgren also insisted his focus was firmly on the airline, despite his background working for Tui and the airline’s accommodation offering easyJet holidays, which he said remains key to the airline’s core offering.
John Strickland, director of JLS Consulting (left), and easyJet’s Johan Lundgren BREXIT OPTIMISM
‘Business at full speed’
Jennifer Morris
Leading travel figures have lamented “lost opportunities” due to the need to focus on Brexit contingency planning.
While the message from panellists taking part in the “Travel leaders speak: UK travel markets – what to expect in 2019” session was one of defiant perseverance, it was agreed a great deal of time, energy and money had been poured into planning for Brexit by the country’s leading travel businesses. Chris Browne, chief operating
10 07.11.2018
officer at easyJet, said such planning was vital because the airline could only continue to be competitive if it kept its costs low.
“I do believe and hope that common sense will prevail… the message from all the negotiations we’ve had with the European Commission and dealing with governments is that even in the event of a ‘hard Brexit’ there will be a bare-bones agreement in place,” she said.
EasyJet is setting up an Austrian headquarters to operate EU flights after Brexit, and has relicensed its pilots onto European licences. “The number of hours that have gone into securing that structure has been phenomenal… and that is just to be able to do what we do today,” Browne added.
He said: “We have Europe’s most visited travel website with 250 million individual visitors. It represents a great opportunity for them to book with someone who doesn’t look like an OTA.”
She said that while so far easyJet has not seen an impact on appetite to travel to Europe, “the sooner we get some certainty the better”. Andrew Flintham, managing director of Tui UK and Ireland, said the main cost of the Brexit vote had been the “energy and effort” taken to “put in place that insurance policy when we could have been doing other things”. He added: “There’s definitely almost a lost opportunity. But we can’t let it get in the way of an optimistic future.”
All the panellists agreed the only option for businesses was to maintain optimism.
“We haven’t let it get in the way of any investment decisions,” Flintham added. “Business is carrying on full steam ahead because it has to, and the world will carry on after March 29.”
TOURISM BOOST
New fl ights and hotels for Montreal
The skyline of Montreal Abra Dunsby
Montreal is to ramp up its tourism offering with an array of new flight routes and the opening of two luxury hotels planned for 2019. Alexandra Leclerc, director of international business development and media relations for Quebec Original (NA400), said a new Four Seasons hotel, opening in Montreal next March, would add to the city’s “current luxury hotel development boom”.
The Quebec-based city will also welcome a second luxury boutique hotel, the Hotel Birks Montreal later this year.
And Montreal will benefit from new flight capacity in 2019, including a new direct Aer Lingus route from Dublin to Montreal, which launches on August 8.
Additional flights planned for next year include a new Air Canada Tokyo-Montreal route, which launches in June, and an Austrian Airlines Vienna-Montreal flight, which will take off on April 29. The French-speaking region is celebrating a number of anniversaries next year, which it hopes will entice further visitors. These include the 50th anniversary of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s bed-in, a non-violent protest against the Vietnam war that took place at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth hotel in Montreal.
Next year also marks the anniversary of Cirque de Soleil’s show, Alegria, which will return to the big top in the Old Port of Montreal on April 18, 25 years after its first performance. The show will then travel to Gatineau on August 1.
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