Transavia acknowledges overcapacity in some European leisure markets, but notes "North Africa is not struggling right now for tourism" and that Turkish demand has made "a small improvement".
"I think the trend in the past couple of years has been a bit of over-capacity towards Spain," says Oliver Newton, network planner at low-cost leisure operator Transavia, speaking to FlightGlobal on 23 April at the Routes Europe event in Bilbao. "A lot of people have moved [capacity], for example, from Turkey towards Spain and Portugal.”
But Newton states that "North Africa is actually doing really well", adding that the Morocco market "is growing each year" and "Tunisia will eventually come back as well".
Further boosting fortunes for the Air France-KLM Group carrier is the "improving" Israeli market, which prompted it to add a service from Amsterdam Schiphol to the resort town of Eilat during the coming winter season.
"We’re constantly looking for new destinations, especially in the winter, that have a good climate, that have year-round sun," says Newton. "Eilat was a really good opportunity for us as an alternative to the Canary Islands, Egypt or Dubai."
The Eilat flights will be in addition to new winter services from Amsterdam to Beirut, its first scheduled operations from Rotterdam to Nador in Morocco and a link to Krakow from Eindhoven.
Those markets are helping to offset the impact of reduced demand on Transavia’s "mainly charter" services to Turkey, he says, where security concerns and political instability in recent years have damaged the country's appeal to tourists.
"[Demand has] reduced quite significantly since about five years ago," he states. "There was a small improvement since last year but it’s not quite reached the levels of five years ago."
He adds that Transavia's overall yields and load factors have been on an upward trend.
FlightGlobal schedules data for April shows the Dutch carrier's busiest routes from its Netherlands bases are to Spain and Portugal. Tel Aviv, Nice and Athens also rank highly in terms of seats.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
