As the travel industry looks back on a wild 2023, the Walt Disney World Resort is looking forward to 2024 with events, openings and tips for the new year.
30.11.2023 - 00:47 / skift.com / Delta Air Lines / Virgin Atlantic / Edward Russell / Airlines
Virgin Atlantic CEO Shai Weiss looks forward to a good winter. Bookings are strong and leisure travelers, especially those paying top dollar for the seats in the pointy end of the plane, are eager to travel to the airline’s many warm-weather destinations.
“All destinations — the Caribbean, we’ve just launched Dubai, [and] of course the Maldives — all of them are doing well ahead of our plans,” Weiss said Tuesday in an interview with Skift in New York. “Leisure demand is strong, [and] the premium cabins have been exceptionally strong.”
Weiss was in the U.S. following a sustainable aviation fuel demonstration flight from London to New York. That flight was part of an effort by Virgin Atlantic to push the UK government to enact policies supporting the development and production of the low-carbon fuels.
His comments fit the transatlantic travel narrative that airlines have painted this year. “Record” demand, as many executives have put it, has driven up fares and profits for carriers from British Airways and Iberia-parent International Airlines Group to United Airlines. That’s true even amid the broader macroeconomic uncertainty and conflicts in Ukraine and, more recently, the Middle East.
Corporate travelers have yet to return in full. Weiss said corporate volumes are only back to roughly 80% of 2019 levels, though that does represent a five-point improvement from the level he cited in comments in October. But that has not stopped airlines for resuming flights and adding new destinations that cater to the hoards of leisure fliers.
For Virgin Atlantic, that means new service to the Maldives this winter and resuming seasonal flights to Dubai. The airline will add Bengaluru — its third destination in India — and Sao Paulo to its map next summer.
“At the end of the day, the focus on the controllable should yield a return to profitability in 2024 for Virgin Atlantic,” Weiss said when asked if the global outlook had changed the airline’s goal of turning a profit next year. By “controllable” factors, he meant Virgin Atlantic’s own costs and network, as opposed to external issues like oil prices and wars.
“It was always the goal and remains the goal,” Weiss added on profitability.
Virgin Atlantic lost more money during the pandemic than it made during the entirety of the 2010s: £903 million ($1.1 billion) in operating losses from 2020 through 2022 compared to £77 million in cumulative operating profits during the entire previous decade. Those losses, and Virgin Atlantic’s previous financial struggles, forced it to restructure during the crisis and cut some £300 million in annual expenses.
The airline turned its last operating profit in 2019, and net profit in 2016.
Part of the profitability push has meant
As the travel industry looks back on a wild 2023, the Walt Disney World Resort is looking forward to 2024 with events, openings and tips for the new year.
Passport processing times have returned to pre-pandemic levels, the State Department said Monday — it now takes just six to eight weeks for a passport, or two to three weeks for an expedited one.
The Norse Atlantic Airways inaugural flight from London Gatwick arrived on 1st December 2023 into Montego Bay with hundreds of excited holidaymakers on board. The much-anticipated flight was given an auspicious welcome amidst a press fanfare at the Sangster International Airport. The arrival of the historic flight introduced the beginning of a new chapter in travel between the United Kingdom and Jamaica. The occasion reflects the commitment of both nations to foster mutual growth in the tourism industry, creating boundless opportunities for both Jamaican and British travellers alike.
Navan, a travel and expense management startup, has laid off 5% of employees at the company, accounting for about 145 people.
New Year, new national park to check off your must-visit list? Mark your calendars: The park system just announced a half dozen “free days” for 2024 that are spread throughout the year, beginning with Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 15, 2024.
Norway will soon get a ground-breaking new museum. On May 11, 2024, Kunstsilo, located in Kristiansand, Southern Norway, opens its doors. Set inside a meticulously restored grain silo, Kunstsilo boasts three floors of immersive art and is a fusion of the Southern Norway Art Museum and the prestigious Tangen Collection.
Top of the morning to you. Do you know that quote, “There are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet?”
If you've used Virgin Atlantic's Flying Club program to book Delta-operated flights in the past, listen up. You have just a couple of days before Virgin significantly increases the price of many Delta award itineraries. While it's not all bad news, you'll soon need more Virgin points across a large portion of Delta's route network.
Genalguacil (Pueblo Museo), Recartografías and Camino del Cid are the winning projects of this edition in the categories of revitalising tourism services, management of depopulated territories and promotion of territories, respectively.
The flight marks a world first on 100% SAF by a commercial airline across the Atlantic, flown on a Boeing 787, using Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines.
Here is a plan for a day out on the Metropolitan line of London’s underground, although we will at no stage be under ground, and will travel 25 miles from London. First, however, a little history.
Good morning from Skift. It’s Thursday, November 30. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.