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Spanish travel booking group Amadeus said on Friday that the volume of its bookings in March was the highest since the coronavirus pandemic began wreaking havoc on the airline industry.
Although movement restrictions remain in place in many parts of the world, Amadeus said it has seen a slight increase in flight bookings and passenger boardings.
“In terms of volume, this was the best performing month since February 2020. In April, we saw further improvement,” CEO Luis Maroto said in a statement. Shares of the Spanish group rose 3.9% by 0740 GMT, topping the blue-chip index in Madrid.
However, the world’s largest travel booking services provider said air travel bookings by travel agents in the first quarter were still 60% below their level a year ago. The number of passengers boarding across its IT solutions business fell 67% to 127.2 million.
The contraction in flight reservations reached 79% in the fourth quarter and 90% in the third quarter. The tourism industry is urging governments to reopen international travel as the vaccination process accelerates. But rising Covid-19 cases in India and elsewhere, fears about the emergence of new variants of the virus, and the complexity of organizing health checks are all factors that could hinder the recovery.
Global passenger traffic improved in March, but revenue per passenger kilometers (RPKs) fell by 67.2% compared to the pre-crisis level, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on Tuesday.
The industry body now expects global air traffic to recover to 43% of the pre-crisis level in 2021. Amadeus swung to a slightly narrower-than-expected adjusted loss of 83.1 million euros ($100.2 million) in the first quarter. Analysts had expected a quarterly loss of 93.5 million euros.
