With the easing of certain travel restrictions, Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) has experienced a significant increase in its flight booking volumes for the coming Easter season. Last weekend SWISS registered up to five times more bookings for flights in April to Spain and Portugal than it had seen the weekend before.
SWISS Chief Commercial Officer Tamur Goudarzi Pour explains: “As the examples of Spain and Portugal clearly show, lifting quarantine requirements and adopting reliable travel rules leads directly to tangible booking growth. Many people currently have a strong desire to make up for the travel they have recently missed, especially to the sun and the beach. And we’ve responded to this by expanding our SWISS services for the coming Easter travel season.”
Additional flights to Spain and Portugal
SWISS has reacted promptly to the increased travel demand by expanding its programme of services from Zurich for the coming weeks. Additional flights are being offered to Palma de Mallorca, Málaga, Barcelona, Alicante and Valencia. As a result, a total of 43 flights will be operated to Spain in the week of 29 March (compared to the 34 originally planned), and 59 such flights (compared to the 48 originally planned) will operate in the week of 5 April. SWISS services have also been increased to Porto and Lisbon in Portugal.
In some cases SWISS will also be deploying larger aircraft to offer more capacity to the destinations concerned. Some flights will thus be operated with Airbus A321 equipment, SWISS’s biggest short-haul aircraft with up to 219 passenger seats. The use of long-haul aircraft on such services is also being considered.
Standardized and digitalized travel documents needed
As part of the Lufthansa Group, SWISS is also working to help digitalize and standardize the document checks required to ensure travellers’ compliance with the various national medical entry provisions. If they can present the requisite documents in electronic form, travellers can be offered a faster and contactless check-in process. Several candidate concepts are currently being trialled to these ends.
Goudarzi Pour says: “Further structural expansion of our flight offerings requires the adoption of internationally recognized standardized and digitalized test and vaccination records.”
Full rebooking flexibility remains
SWISS will continue to closely monitor all further developments in entry requirements worldwide, and will expand its flight offerings wherever possible to meet its customers’ demand. SWISS will also continue to provide its customers with maximum assurance in their air travel plans by offering flexible rebooking options in all fare categories. Any SWISS ticket issued on or before 31 May 2021 can be rebooked free of charge any number of times up to 31 May 2021 and one further time thereafter. And any customer whose flight is cancelled can rebook free of charge or have the price of their ticket refunded.
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