Potential travel recovery by 2022 – Mamoun Hmedan, MD EMEA- Wego

Mamoun Hmedan in his remarks stated how through their 54 million users they had researched on the traveller trends and behaviours over the past 13 months and found that the longer period of vacations by bigger families would take more time to return instead the travellers in the new world of today consist more of millennials, couples etc. the travel period shift from longer  2 to 3 week holidays to shorter holidays; multiple destinations turned to single destinations with a much shorter travel time and fewer days on vacation such as 3 to 4 days and outdoor destinations. The momentum for travel still exists but outcome or trends have changed. “UAE winter campaign was a good example that drove in tourists during the festive season, this approach resonated very well with travellers. I feel that 2021 will end on a better recovery close to 50% of 2019 but potentially we see early 2022 or 2023 to be more akin to 2019 over the research that is currently being passed on. With vaccinations happening we are going to see it happening faster but it all depends on the governments, travellers and bookings. Earlier on in the pandemic, they predicted a totally different picture of how to post covid will be with aircraft and how they will attend to passengers but now things are different. For us in metaspace where we work with everyone in the industry we ensured that provided the customers with the right information. It was necessary to keep our customers informed of all the necessary protocols, procedures, health passports etc – we provided relevant content for them.”