The Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings sees a trend reversal in the business travel sector. This area continues to weaken for many airlines, as numerous companies have significantly reduced the number of business trips since the beginning of the corona pandemic.

According to Eurowings, the number of bookings made by business travelers in November 2022 should be 60 percent higher than in the same month of the previous year. In relation to the summer months, the current bookings are even twice as high. The current top routes at Eurowings include, for example, the European connections from Düsseldorf to Milan and Vienna, from Hamburg to London and from Stuttgart to Budapest. On the domestic German routes, connections from Berlin to Cologne, from Düsseldorf to Berlin, from Stuttgart to Berlin and from Hamburg to Stuttgart are far ahead. This makes a trend reversal clear: for the first time since the beginning of the corona pandemic, Eurowings is no longer registering a fall in demand towards the winter half-year, but on the contrary an upturn in booking numbers in the business travel segment.

“We see increasing dynamics in business travel across all sectors. Travel is currently increasing in almost all branches of industry – also because there is a great need to catch up on personal meetings,” says Eurowings CEO Jens Bischof. The company also writes that the elimination of the mask requirement, which Germany had insisted on until the end of September 2022, had a positive impact on the number of new bookings.

The upswing is particularly noticeable at the major German trade fair locations in Düsseldorf, Cologne, Hamburg and Stuttgart, which are also the largest Eurowings locations: The need for personal exchange fills the trade fair sites, driving business trips and attracting visitors from all over Europe on. Around two thirds of all global industry events take place in Germany, and four of the world's ten largest exhibition centers are in Germany. Passengers use the attractive off-peak times to travel from Birmingham, Geneva, Lyon, Prague, Salzburg or Stockholm, for example. Air traffic is also benefiting from a significant easing of the situation at German airports. Since the holiday travel peak in the summer months, a lot of the load has been removed from the system, and the waves of recruitment are also having an effect across the industry. So far in November, Eurowings has flown with a reliability of 99,5 percent - a value that is recognized as high in the industry.