Every so often, there is a battle of the giants at the top of the travel industry to determine who is biggest and bravest. Thomson vs Harry Goodman’s Intasun; Thomson vs Airtours; and, finally, Thomson/Tui vs Thomas Cook.
These battles usually end in tears for one of the parties. Discounting is rife, although always denied by the combatants – and, when they fight it out at the top, it gets pretty uncomfortable for those lower down the ladder. It’s all too easy to put on capacity, but it’s not always so easy to actually fly it. Nobody knows how much of this extra capacity will, eventually, be cancelled.
There is always some double counting too, as third-party operators will count carryings contracted on airlines owned by competitors as their own; the airlines probably count that capacity as their own too. The picture is invariably muddied.
On the one hand, millions of seats have supposedly been added in 2024; on the other, the honeypot destinations these seats are slated to fly to complain of overtourism. Dubrovnik, Split, Amsterdam, Vienna, Venice, Barcelona, the Balearics, Tenerife and others do not like cheap tourism. But increased capacity means attracting a wider and cheaper market source, leading directly to exactly the cheap tourism these destinations do not want.
Airlines boast about the more efficient, cleaner aircraft they fly, and the fuels they use. However, according to travel and tourism insights from Mabrian, aviation’s European carbon footprint grew by 16% during 2023. No doubt, with all this much-discussed increased capacity, the aviation industry’s carbon footprint will grow still more in 2024.
So where exactly are we on aviation sustainability, and just who do we think are we kidding?
Noel Josephides is chair at Sunvil.
