Aviation Insights Report – January 2019

Analysis of Airline Booking Patterns and Events Impact

With the arrival of a new year comes with it thousands of events that could impact air travel and businesses influenced by it. In the second report of our Aviation Insights series, we highlight selected upcoming events that are likely to impact the air travel industry during January 2019, in order to help airlines, hotels and other industries better forecast future demand. The events are located in six different cities around the world and cover a range of business and leisure travel types.

The North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) is one of the largest auto shows in North America. The annual event is expected to attract approximately 800,000 domestic and international visitors to Detroit, Michigan during January 2019. Demand analysis indicates a 54% increase in inbound travel to Detroit metropolitan area airports (IATA Code: DTT) during the weekend before the event starts.

The analysis also highlights that international visitors to NAIAS arrange their flight bookings on average 42 days before the event start date, compared to 24 days for domestic travelers.

It was recently announced that, in 2020, NAIAS will be moving from January to the week of June 8th. As a result, the impact of this event is likely to shift accordingly.

The month of January also highlights leisure travel patterns associated with major sports events happening all over the world. For example, the Winter X Games attracts approximately 100,000 visitors to the town of Aspen, Colorado while the Australian Open Tennis Championships is expected to attract approximately 600,000 to Melbourne, Australia. The impact of the Australian Open Tennis Championship is expected to coincide with other significant local events such as the Electric Gardens music festival.