On the evening of June 30, flight AK117 took off from Guangzhou Baiyun Airport to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the "red-eye flight" was also full of passengers. On July 1, the 2024 summer travel season will be hotly opened, and the first batch of passengers will be "on the way".
The industry believes that the summer vacation will become the longest peak period of the year, especially the visa-free benefits will further drive the popularity of outbound travel in some countries, and the summer tourism market in Malaysia and Singapore is expected to exceed that of 2019.
The popularity of outbound travel has increased significantly
As primary and secondary schools and colleges across the country begin to focus on summer vacation, the popularity of outbound travel continues to rise. According to the data of Air Travel, as of June 27, the number of scheduled flights on inbound and outbound routes during the summer travel period of 2024 (7.1-8.31) was about 145,000, and the number of air tickets booked on inbound and outbound routes was nearly 7 million, an increase of about 93% over the same period last year. The top 10 popular destinations are: Bangkok, Seoul, Tokyo, Osaka, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, London, Phuket, and Macau. According to the analysis of Qunar Big Data Research Institute, the demand for summer outbound travel is very strong and is expected to basically recover to the level of 2019.
It is worth noting that with the opening of visa-free travel to the mainland in many popular tourist destinations in Asia, the visa-free policy has a very obvious effect on the destinations. Taking Laos, which has just announced visa exemption recently, as an example, as of June 27, the number of domestic air ticket bookings to and from Laos during the 2024 summer travel period (7.1-8.31) is about 18,000, an increase of about 2.5 times over the same period last year.
At 11:50 a.m. on June 30, an A340 aircraft of Conviasa Airlines of Venezuela took off from the capital of Venezuela and arrived at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, which is the first passenger route of Baiyun Airport to South America. The route is expected to be officially commercialized in October this year, and the routes are planned to be Guangzhou-Moscow-Pollamar-Caracas, Guangzhou-Moscow-Havana-Caracas. Up to now, Baiyun Airport has more than 230 passenger destinations, with about 1,500 round-trip international and regional passenger flights per week. Starting in July, routes from Guangzhou to Paris, Amsterdam, Nairobi and Auckland will further increase the frequency of flights, and routes such as Perth will resume operations.
Baiyun Airport opened its first passenger route to South America.
International flights continue to recover, and passengers have more travel choices. On 1 July, AirAsia announced that it will launch a new direct route to Africa to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and known as a safari paradise. The route will make its maiden flight on November 15, 2024, AirAsia X provides passengers with special tickets from Chinese mainland to Nairobi via Kuala Lumpur, the reporter searched for the AirAsia Mini Program and saw that now the purchase of a ticket from Guangzhou to Nairobi only costs about 2,800 yuan including tax.
AirAsia has announced the launch of its Nairobi service.
AirAsia's round-trip ticket from Guangzhou to Nairobi is as low as around 2,800 yuan.
The Shenzhen-Zhongshan Corridor was officially opened a few days ago, and Shenzhen Airlines has created a product for passengers on the west bank of the Pearl River such as Zhongshan and Jiangmen to take a plane and take a bus for free, realizing "machine + car" one-stop travel. Su Lin, general manager of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Marketing Center of the Marketing Committee of Shenzhen Airlines, introduced that the "ground-air intermodal transport" product of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Corridor launched by Shenzhen Airlines is aimed at passengers on the west bank of the Pearl River such as Zhongshan and Jiangmen.
Shenzhen Airlines launched the "ground-air intermodal transport" product of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Corridor.
In response to the needs of passengers visiting Shanghai Disneyland, China Eastern Airlines has launched a special "Disney Preferred Ticket Product", which allows passengers who purchase flights to Shanghai to receive a 150 yuan coupon that can be directly deducted from the purchase of Disney ticket products, which will last until November 16 this year.
Airlines encrypt popular travel routes
During the summer season, China Southern Airlines Group plans to carry out a total of nearly 200,000 flights, including more than 14,000 overtime flights. China Southern Airlines plans to arrange overtime on more than 100 routes, with an average of about 240 overtime flights per day and nearly 3,300 flights per day during the peak season peak period.
Domestically, China Southern Airlines' new and encrypted routes are mainly concentrated in popular tourist cities such as Xinjiang, Northeast China, Northwest China and North China. Among them, for the recently popular Xinjiang region, new routes between Shanghai, Shenzhen, Yinchuan, Changchun, Wuhan and Harbin to Altay have been opened, with a round-trip flight volume of 37 flights per week; Increase the number of flights to eastern cities such as Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Guiyang and Wuhan to Urumqi; The direct routes of the eastern route to Xinjiang include Guangzhou to Kashgar, Beijing Daxing to Kashgar, Altay and Korla routes. In the northeast, the new route from Beijing Daxing and Shanghai to Changbai Mountain will be opened, with one round trip per day; Increase direct flights from Harbin and Shenyang to Urumqi. In the northwest, flights from Beijing Daxing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen to Xining, Yinchuan, Lanzhou and other hot markets were increased, and 18 flights per day were put into operation by wide-body aircraft during peak periods. In North China, new routes from Hailar to Shenzhen, Changsha and Zhengzhou were added, with 28 flights per week.
China Southern Airlines Baiyun Airport Service Counter.
During the summer travel period, China Southern Airlines will resume international and regional flights in an orderly manner based on objective factors such as domestic and foreign policies, overseas schedules, and airport support capabilities, and successively open flights from Beijing Daxing-London, Guangzhou-Rome and Shenzhen-Sydney, and increase flights between Guangzhou-Paris and Guangzhou-Sydney, so as to provide more choices for passengers to travel abroad.
During the summer vacation, the total number of round-trip flights in the Bay Area of Shenzhen Airlines was nearly 30,000, the number of routes out of the Bay Area was 134, and the average daily flight volume was more than 480 flights.
During the summer season, China Eastern Airlines will put in nearly 800 passenger aircraft, including 6 domestic large aircraft C919, and carry out 1,002 passenger routes, covering 249 destinations at home and abroad. The average daily passenger flights scheduled to reach 3,213, an increase of 13% year-on-year in 2019, and international and regional flights recovered to 102% of the same period in 2019. For the Guangdong market, China Eastern Airlines has added and encrypted routes from Guangzhou to Qingdao, Taiyuan and Dali, Shenzhen to Dali and Xi'an, Foshan to Turpan, Huai'an, Ordos and Hangzhou, Jieyang to Zhoushan and Hefei, Zhuhai to Xi'an and Ningbo, and changed some popular routes from narrow-body aircraft to wide-body aircraft. Recently, China Eastern Airlines has also adjusted the check-in deadline for international flights departing from Guangzhou from 60 minutes before departure to 45 minutes before departure, so that passengers will have more time to check in.
China Eastern Airlines has changed some of its popular routes in Guangdong from narrow-body aircraft to wide-body aircraft.
Hainan Airlines is expected to operate 864 domestic and foreign flights per day during the summer season, an increase of 10.6% year-on-year in the summer of 2023, of which 816 domestic flights are planned, an increase of 9% year-on-year in 2023, and 48 international and regional flights are planned to be 48 flights/day, an increase of 48% year-on-year in 2023. Hainan Airlines will also launch wide-body aircraft capacity on routes between Urumqi and Guangzhou-Shenzhen, bringing passengers a more spacious and comfortable flight experience.
The average daily passenger flow of Guangzhou South Railway Station exceeds 600,000
In terms of railways, Guangzhou South Railway Station is expected to have 39.336 million passengers arriving and departing this summer, with an average of 634,500 passengers per day. Among them, it is expected to send 20.401 million passengers, with an average of 329,000 passengers per day, and 18.935 million passengers are expected to arrive, with an average of 305,000 passengers per day. This summer, the passenger flow of Guangzhou South Railway Station is mainly based on student flow, tourism flow, and family visit flow, supplemented by business flow. Among them, the flow of students and tourists is mainly concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and other large cities and scenic areas, and the flow of visiting relatives is mostly from small and medium-sized cities to Guangzhou in the early stage, and mainly returns to their hometowns in the later stage. The overall passenger flow is relatively balanced, and the peak passenger flow is mainly concentrated in mid-to-early July and mid-to-late August due to the impact of student passenger flow.
Guangzhou South Railway Station ushered in the peak of student passenger flow.
In order to meet the travel needs of passengers, Guangzhou South Railway Station makes full use of the high-standard operation and quality improvement achievements of the Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed railway, accurately implements the "one map per day", analyzes the big data of railway 12306 standby ticket purchase in real time, and further improves the transportation capacity by means of train reconnection, switching to large marshalling or adding night high-speed rail trains, and currently plans to add 22 pairs of peak line trains, mainly to Shenzhen, Changsha, Zhanjiang, Shantou, Yueyang and other directions. During the summer transportation period, Guangzhou South Railway Station will further increase the guarantee of passenger service, dynamically enable real-name verification channels, security inspection channels, and manual ticketing windows according to the passenger flow, and set up "emergency passenger" channels at each channel to provide priority and fast entry services for passengers within 15 minutes before departure, and smooth passenger flow.
Southern + reporter Liu Qian Huang Xuhao
【Author】 Liu Qian; Huang Xuhao
[Source] Southern Press Media Group Southern + client