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High prices, bad conscience: After Corona, everything in the flight business should be different than before. But now the number of passengers is increasing again – and not just in Switzerland.
Zurich Airport reported a record on Sunday: for the first time since 2019, more than 100,000 people traveled in one day.
Only recently it was said that the Swiss would never fly abroad as much as before after the corona pandemic. The term flight shame made the rounds. Instead of going to Bali or Miami, holidays in the Bernese Oberland or in Valais would become more popular. But that seems to be over now. In June, Swiss hotels recorded 4.2 percent fewer overnight stays by domestic guests than in the same month last year. What happened?
Strong longing and full wallets
“After Corona, you should enjoy traveling again,” said a passenger to SRF at the start of the holiday at Zurich Airport. According to the experts, this feeling is widespread. “People have some catching up to do,” says Christian Laesser. He lectures at the HSG in the field of tourism.
The pandemic has not only created pent-up demand, but also enabled savings, explains his colleague Michael Stiebe from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts: “By working more from home, people have saved money. This allows them to react to the increased prices.”
Legend: 100,000 people flew over Zurich Airport last Sunday. (pictured July 15, 2023) KEYSTONE/Urs Flueeler
This is also necessary because flying has become significantly more expensive than before the pandemic. The time of cheap flights seems to be over. In the future, Switzerland could also do the same as other countries and introduce a flight ticket tax. The extent to which such an approach would affect people’s flight behavior is, however, disputed.
Existing compensation offers from the airlines have met with little interest so far. As a result, more aggressive proposals are already making the rounds that would limit or tax more mileage per person.
For the time being, however, the flight will continue – and the pictures of it will be cheerfully shared. In the age of social media, the need to travel to unfamiliar – but nevertheless familiar – places seems to have increased.
In the USA, where the number of trips to Europe is currently exploding, people are already talking about the “Emily in Paris effect”. The popular Netflix series caused a real boom. «I have never seen so many red berets», a travel guide told the New York Times.
The world is on the move
At Switzerland Tourism, disappointment with the reduced number of domestic guests is limited. “Fortunately, the Swiss rediscovered their own country during the pandemic. We knew that it wouldn’t last forever,” said media spokesman Markus Berger.
What should have smoothed the worry lines of the tourism industry: the foreign tourists are now making up for the losses. According to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO), there were a total of 23 percent more overnight stays by foreign guests in June compared to the same month last year.
The revival of air traffic is not a purely Swiss phenomenon. A few days ago, the flight data portal Flightradar24 registered more flight movements worldwide than ever before. And that might just be the beginning. Only a small part of humanity still flies. The umbrella organization of airlines IATA estimates that the number of global air passengers will double by 2040.