MasterCard Releases Post COVID -19 Recovery Insights In Africa, Middle East

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MasterCard on Sunday released a Post COVID-19  Recovery Insight that would help travellers to key-in  into  travel trends in the air and on  ground in Africa and Middle East.

The  report  stated   that  global travel recovery remained uneven : a rebound in ground travel and pick-up in domestic flight bookings  showing encouraging signs.

This is contained in a statement issued by Mr David Mann, the Chief Economist of MasterCard for the Middle East and Africa (MEA) in Lagos.

Mann said that   the report, developed by the MasterCard Economics Institute, drew on aggregated and anonymized sales’ activity across the global MasterCard network to better understand the next phase for travel, its drivers and challenges.

“The report includes the balance between leisure and business, local and long-distance, saving and spending. The report also looked  at the spending categories seeing an uptick and the signal for travel recovery.

“There are indicators of recovery across some markets in the Middle East and  Africa, for example gas spending in Nigeria and Egypt are already above 2019 peaks.

“Global gasoline spending is up by 13 per cent from its previous peak in 2019. In Egypt and Nigeria, spendings  at gas stations are already higher than their 2019 peaks, while in the UAE and in Kenya, they have equalised previous levels.

“Air travel remains down significantly globally, although the trajectory is upwards. In markets like the UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, international flight bookings are climbing, but are still at a fraction of where they were before the pandemic began.”

He said that global business travel lagged  behind  global leisure travel by approximately four months.

In the Middle East and  Africa though, there was  a closer correlation to leisure and business travel growth, he said.

“The limited border reopenings have proven to be challenging for travellers and the travel industry alike. But select open corridors are showing partial recovery.”

Accorfing to him, flights out of the Middle East and Africa are gradually improving, with intra-regional travel to Egypt and the United Arab Emirates most notable.

Mr Raj Seshadri, President of Data and Services of  MasterCard , said  the past year had only reinforced how important travel was – to our connection with friends, family and the broader world, to our business communities and for our personal fulfillment.

“The economic implications of tourism are vast, with virtually no industry untouched when travellers stay home.

“Through Recovery Insights, we have helped airlines redesign travel routes, retailers in rejigging  inventory and cities understand shifts in neighborhood spending.

“It’s about enabling smarter decisions for better outcomes today and tomorrow,” he noted.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that MasterCard launched Recovery Insights to help businesses and governments better manage the economic risks presented by COVID-19.

Through the initiative, MasterCard has provided data-driven insights and other services to businesses and governments to help them understand the  ever-changing consumer spending trends and how to address them. (NAN) (www.nannews.ng)

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