Business Class on board a Virgin Australia Boeing 777. Airline chief Jayne Hrdlicka says business travel will not return to what it was before COVID-19.

According to Jayne Hrdlicka, CEO of Virgin Australia, business travel won’t go back to what it was before COVID-19, but that will mean cheaper fares for vacationers.

“Business travel is not coming back like it was before COVID,” she told the Tourism and Transport Forum’s Outlook 2021 tourism industry conference on Wednesday.

Ms. Hrdlicka mentioned the rise of video conferencing as a substitute for travel to business meetings and conferences.

“Traveling aboard an airplane will be cheaper per seat than ever before,” said Jayne Hrdlicka, CEO of Virgin Australia. Photo: Dan Peled

“There is a structural change in the way people have traveled in the past and we need to be prepared for it.”

That should be bad news for airlines that rely heavily on business travelers for their income – not just by flying at the pointed end of the aircraft in premium seats, but also by buying more expensive flexible fares or short-term flights in economy class.

For leisure travelers, however, this could be good news, Hrdlicka suggested, as airlines would have to offer cheap fares to ensure seats are filled to make up for the loss of business travelers.

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“It will be cheaper per seat to travel on an airplane than it has been for a long time,” she said. “The higher fares that business passengers have paid won’t be that many, (but) we still have to sell these seats. So all the seats will be cheaper than in the past.”

Ms. Hrdlicka said customer volume is key to the future, not just for airlines but also for hotels and other parts of the tourism industry.

She said the downturn caused by the pandemic means people needed encouragement to get back into the habit of traveling.

“It will take time to develop new patterns of behavior and we are investing to make sure that it is irresistible to travel so that we can sell enough of the seats on offer so that people can go back to normal and enjoy the experience they are having were cordoned off last year. “

“Then we’ll go back to a more normal environment in the next two to three years.”

Ms. Hrdlicka reiterated the comments made by rival Qantas’ CEO Mr. Alan Joyce on the introduction of vaccination in Australia.

“We all have a job to do to make sure we get out of there as soon as possible,” she said.

“If we had been vaccinated better as a country, Melbourne would not have been banned and we would not have had the dysfunction we just went through, adding that she had received her first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

She said Virgin Australia is working to ensure that every employee is vaccinated.

“If we as an industry don’t model great vaccination behavior and demonstrate what it takes to get to the other side, who will do it?” She said.

“We had the most difficult time getting through this and we have to go ahead.”

Virgin Australia has not yet followed Qantas’ lead and has adopted Incentives for people to get vaccinated. Mr Joyce announced on May 31 that Qantas would be offering vaccinated passengers discounts, flight vouchers and frequent flyer point bonuses. He also announced important prices for free flights for one year with the airline.

In her address to the conference, Ms. Hrdlicka did not address the issue of Australia’s international border closings, which she controversially said last month should be reopened as soon as enough people are vaccinated, even if it meant “some people will die could “.

The comments were criticized from several quarters, including by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and led to social media calls for the people boycott the airline.

Virgin Australia announced new routes and increased capacity in the domestic market last month. The five new routes Darwin-Sydney, Adelaide-Cairns, Sydney-Townsville, Melbourne-Townsville and Cairns-Perth as well as the increased capacity on other routes add more than 700 flights per week to Virgin’s route network. The airline is also looking for 250 new employees.

See also: Rattlesnakes infest Qantas’ grounded A380 in the California desert

See also: No more perks: business trips may never come back