Business travellers beat a path to Singapore

Bali might be the top destination pick for Australian holiday-makers but for business travellers, Singapore is the star.

Booming demand from business travel has forced airlines to dramatically increase capacity on key international routes.

While holiday-makers rush back to Bali it’s Singapore that business travellers are falling over themselves to get to, with flights to the city-state defying the capacity crunch elsewhere.

A report by Flight Centre’s corporate advisory arm FCM Consulting shows the number of seats available between Singapore and Sydney, Melbourne and Perth are now well in excess of pre-Covid levels.

In the second half of the year, even more capacity was due to come online for those routes, putting Sydney-Singapore 53 per cent ahead of 2019 levels, Perth up 47 per cent and Melbourne 38 per cent above pre-pandemic figures.

The abundance of seats was due to the number of airlines operating flights between Australia and Singapore, flight frequency and the size of the aircraft used for those services.

Singapore Airlines and Qantas were both flying A380s on Sydney-Singapore, while British Airways, Scoot and Jetstar also offered connections between Australia and Singapore.

As a result more than 150 flights a week were operating between Australian ports and Singapore, which was our sixth largest trading partner in 2020.

With much lower capacity on other routes such as those into the Middle East and the US, FCM Consulting general manager Felicity Burke said the Australia-Singapore connection had never been more critical.

“The link between Australia and Singapore has always been incredibly important but it’s now more vital than ever in terms of trade, holidays, and being a gateway to the rest of the world as one of the major hub airports,” Ms Burke said.

“For Australians, travelling into Singapore has been the most viable and central location for face-to-face regional business meetings proving Singapore is again a critical hub for the rest of the world.”

As more of the world opened up, it was expected other routes would challenge Singapore’s dominance, such as those transiting through Hong Kong and China, Ms Burke said.

“We also need to factor in that the northern hemisphere summer is in full swing, peak season, so travelling out of Australia and into Europe and North America is extremely popular,” she said.

There were now 141 countries completely open to fully vaccinated travellers, clearing the way for greater international travel in the months ahead.

Ms Burke said that by the end of the year, global airline seat capacity was forecast to be back to 85 per cent of pre-Covid levels, and at 83 per cent in the Australian domestic market.

“When it comes to airfares globally and across the APAC region, they have fluctuated across the board with average ticket purchase price increases on routes like Auckland to Melbourne but with reductions between Melbourne and Sydney for the past quarter,” she said.