UAE-based travel website Musafir.com has revealed it reached 96 percent of its pre-Covid business levels in September as the travel industry continues its long journey of recovery from the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
And Sachin Gadoya, CEO and co-founder of the platform, told Arabian Business he expects to reach and surpass 2019 numbers either this month or next.
He said: “September, in particular, has been fantastic for us. We have achieved 96 percent of what we had achieved during the pre-Covid era. As far as number of transactions go, we used to do close to around 40,000 transactions-a-month before Covid; last month we did close to around 45,000 transactions. That’s ten percent higher than what we did pre-Covid. You’re seeing the market return to normalcy.
“We are going to be crossing 100 percent this year itself. I’m talking about month-on-month. When we compare September with September 2019, we’re at 96 percent. Whether it’s October or November, I think we will be crossing our 2019 numbers.”
Gadoya also revealed the company sold 30,000 inbound visas in September.
Business has been boosted by the re-opening of borders and quarantine-free travel from key market countries, namely Saudi Arabia, India and the United Kingdom, while bookings to European destinations, including, Greece, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey, have figured highly for outbound travel.
“I think there is a lot of pent-up demand for travel. There are lots of things that are happening in the UAE as well as globally. If you take the UAE as an example, we had the IPL (Indian Premier League) happening last month, we have expo, followed by the world cup (ICC Cricket World Cup) and then the Formula One coming. So lots of things are happening here,” said Gadoya.
Emirates handled almost 1.2 million customers at its hub in Dubai over July and August and forecast catering for some 190,000 passengers during the current mid-term school break, through to October 28. The airline has restored its network to well over 120 destinations.
Emirates currently flies to over 120 destinations.
Emirates president Sir Tim Clark has previously spoken of his confidence that, not only will the industry recover, but that business travel, in particular, a much-maligned part of the sector in the face of increased video calls and virtual conferencing, will return stronger than ever.
While some aviation experts have predicted the segment could drop as much as 30 percent in a post-Covid world, Gadoya said the evidence was to the contrary. Indeed, according to a study commissioned by Amadeus, 51 percent of travellers in the UAE are expecting to take a flight for business later this year within the Middle East.
Gadoya said: “If I talk about what we have achieved last month, 69 percent of our business was business travel, which is phenomenal. When I was looking at other markets it’s close to around 32 percent.
“People are travelling, people want to travel as well. People want to have that face-to-face, in-person connection. They really don’t want to have endless amounts of Zoom meetings. It’s better when everyone is round the same table talking to eachother. It’s basically what has been there in the past, in 2019, and we are definitely hoping that will be the case going forward.”
Sachin Gadoya, CEO and co-founder of Musafir.com.
Musafir.com, which was launched in 2005, currently operates in the UAE, Qatar and India and Gadoya revealed expansion plans for Saudi Arabia at the start of next year, with new offices to open in Riyadh and Jeddah in the first quarter amid a particular focus on corporate business travel through the company’s platform Musafir Business.
“A lot of our corporates over here have a presence in Saudi and they have been telling us that it makes a lot of sense to have an office there, so that’s what we’re going to go for,” he said.
“We currently have zero corporates in Saudi. Our aim in the next three years is to have in the region of 1,500 SMEs. We did total transactions of around half-a-million in 2019, what we want to do is close to around three million of transactions within the next five years.”
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