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Lockdown impact: Paris, Brussels suffer mass cancellations

Looking at the source markets for travel to Brussels, the UK (-191%), Italy (-206.5%) and Austria (-236%) are proportionately the worst affected and virtually every source market has experienced net cancellations since the lockdown came in to force.

LONDON – Flight bookings to Brussels have collapsed in the wake of the recent attacks in Paris and the lockdown in Brussels, as police search for more suspects.

According to the latest figures from travel data analyst, ForwardKeys, net bookings, which take into account both daily bookings and cancellations, show a drop of 159% since the beginning of the weekend, when the lockdown came in to force.  In the previous week, which directly followed the Paris attacks, bookings were 23% down.

Olivier Jager, Co-founder and CEO of ForwardKeys, which monitors future travel patterns by analysing 15 million reservation transactions each day, explained: “If bookings are 100% down that indicates that no net bookings were made. 159% down means that in addition to no bookings being made, there were cancellations equal to 59% of the number of bookings made on the equivalent day last year.”

Looking at the source markets for travel to Brussels, the UK (-191%), Italy (-206.5%) and Austria (-236%) are proportionately the worst affected and virtually every source market has experienced net cancellations since the lockdown came in to force.

Analysis by type of travel reveals that business travel has been much more significantly affected by the lockdown than leisure travel, with bookings at -195% compared to -106% for leisure.

Somewhat encouragingly however, an analysis of forward bookings shows that business travel bookings for the weeks of December 7th and 14th are running well ahead of last year, suggesting that a significant proportion of business trips to Brussels have, in reality, been postponed by a fortnight rather than cancelled outright.

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Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.

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