The industry should not “place too much hope” in the rapid roll out of a Covid-19 vaccine despite the boost the recent vaccination announcements gave to bookings.
That is according to Travel Trade Consultancy director Martin Alcock who said: “My concern at this point is that the scientists hand the [vaccine] baton on to the government.”
Alcock told a Barclays travel industry ‘state of the nation’ webcast: “It’s dangerous to place too much hope in a vaccine. It’s going to be rolled out at an unprecedented pace. But if you look at the difficult logistics, it’s unlikely to be plain sailing.
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“It’s also going to be complicated by the anti-vax movement.”
Alcock questioned whether there would be “sufficient coverage of the population” to make a difference to travel and whether there will be “some sort of way to prove you had the vaccine”, and argued restrictions are likely to remain.
He said: “In the short-term, testing is more important and more likely to move the dial [on demand]. There are all these organisations announcing their own testing regimes and this idea of mutual recognition, but until there is coordination we’re stuck.
“An added danger is that now the government sees a vaccine coming, they may pull back on investing in testing, so we have to keep pushing on that.”
He forecast 2021 would “not be a normal year”, pointing out: “We’ve witnessed nervous customers deferring travel time and again. One potential scenario is an ultra-late market. Another is people start to book but we have an on/off [resumption].
“Booking patterns will certainly change. That will have implications for cash flow and be made all the more problematic by weak balance sheets.”
Alcock warned: “Business travel is going to struggle to recover. It’s easy to make a case for corporate travel to be down by a quarter or a third in the long term. That will change the economics [for airlines] and we could see an increase in leisure fares.
He told the webcast: “Cruise will take longer to bounce back, but there is an upside for cruise. There will be a worldwide reduction in capacity in 2021, overall about a 10% reduction. It will mean cruise lines need agents even more.”
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