Tag Archives: corporate travel

Lufthansa is set to cancel more than 30,000 flights from its original summer 2023 schedule, according to reports in Germany.

The airline is planning to reduce its schedule by some 34,000 flights this summer, according to the German business newspaper WirtschaftsWoche, due to continuing staff shortages in the aviation industry.

A Lufthansa spokesperson did not confirm the number of cancellations but said the airline was “adjusting its flight schedule for summer”.

“The reason for the early adjustments is to avoid the major operational problems of summer 2022,” they added. “With the experiences of the past summer, it was already decided last year to constantly review the performance of the overall system together with all partners.”

The airline industry continues to suffer from staffing “bottlenecks” which have “not yet been completely overcome”, added Lufthansa.

“For this reason, flights for the summer months have already been canceled – well in advance. This will enable our passengers to adjust their travel plans in line with the alternatives offered by the Lufthansa Group,” said the spokesperson.

The latest move comes after Lufthansa was forced to cancel all flights from Frankfurt and Munich last Friday (17 February) due to a strike at German airports by the Ver.di trade union. The airline had to cancel more than 1,300 services at the affected airports.

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) expects the “further return” of business and travel groups to boost its sales in 2023 despite ongoing “economic uncertainties” around the world.

The global hotel company, which owns brands such as Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza and InterContinental, said that it had seen “strong demand return in most of our markets” during 2022. IHG expects “further recovery in international, corporate and group travel” to be one of its major tailwinds in 2023.

“Trading continued to be driven by strong leisure demand, which was supported by improvements in both corporate and group bookings in the second half of the year,” added IHG in its 2022 results announcement.

IHG’s results for last year showed that the “strongest recovery” had been in the Americas region where revenue per available room (revpar) was 3.3 per cent higher than in 2019. This figure was even higher at 9 per cent in the final three months of 2022.

Trade in the EMEAA (Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa) region was said to be “improving” by IHG with revpar up by 8.8 per cent in the final quarter of the year compared to Q4 in 2019. But China remained 42 per cent below pre-Covid levels due to the “scale of travel restrictions that were still in place” that were still in place last year.

The average daily rate (ADR) for IHG’s properties rose by 18 per cent in 2022 compared to 2021 and was also 8 per cent higher than achieved in 2019, despite

Remington Hotels’ Sloan Dean discusses:

• Strategies for responding to meeting RFPs
• The status of hotel staffing
• Rate projections for 2023

Meetings and group demand for Remington Hotels, a Dallas-based hotel management company with a portfolio of more than 110 properties, not only returned in 2022 but proved to be “better than ever,” CEO Sloan Dean said during a panel discussion at the American Lodging Investment Summit in Los Angeles. The Dean discussed the company’s performance and ongoing strategies with BTN’s Angelique Platas. Edited excerpts follow.

BTN: Can you tell me more about Remington Hotels’ recovery in meetings and the business sector? Why is Remington seeing this level of recovery?

Sloan Dean: From April 1–Dec. 31, 2022, our group revenues consumed were up 12.9 percent versus 2019. It’s up about 10 percent in rate and about 2 percent in room nights, [equating] to almost a 13 percent gain compared on a nominal basis to 2019—those numbers have only accelerated going into 2023. I just finished our January bookings, and about 30 percent of my revenues are group. We’re 70 percent training and 30 percent group, but in the month of January 2023 we are 171 percent over last year. Obviously, omicron kicked up a year ago [and] we’ve got an easy Q1 comparable, but compared to January 2020, our bookings are up 30 percent. Our full-year 2023 group pace—what we have on the books compared to 2019—is actually ahead. I think you’re going to hear a lot of companies talking about