Recent major restructure of Air Mauritius routes has left passengers from Sydney, Melbourne and effectively all of east coast left to ponder other destinations with online, direct access carriers for their holidays this coming winter travel season.
By pulling out of Sydney and Melbourne, and adding an extra Perth flight weekly, Air Mauritius has basically washed its hands of any desire to generate business from Australia’s east coast – this includes any tourists and or Mauritians wishing to return home.
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I doubt the return of Air Austral flights was expected – with Air Austral doing a backflip and reinstating flights from Sydney to Reunion Island twice weekly. At least Sydney passengers will be able to get a one stop flight to Mauritius with Air Austral through Reunion Island – where as Melbourne passengers, the heart of the Mauritian community would now need to 2 stops through Sydney and Reunion or 1 through Perth with a long connection and mad dash between domestic and international airports.
To add to the chaos, Air Mauritius have changed the dates of their current scheduled Perth flights, meaning thousands of travellers bookings for the next year are affected by date changes. Onward Africa and Europe traffic is further affected with forced overnights in Mauritius, and missed connections now being forced through to travel agent systems around the world.
As you can imagine this was a massive shock to tour operators, and Australian travellers wishing to travel to Mauritius – especially after Air Mauritius announced only 2 weeks ago a 37% increase in Australian passengers in 2011. Read the story here
Air Mauritius saw a 37% increase in Australian passengers in 2011, with numbers up more than 4,000 people year on year.
— Travel Daily (@travel_daily) February 2, 2012
So, there are still plenty of flights to Mauritius with Air Austral returning with two Boeing 777′s ex Sydney weekly, plus 2 Airbus A330′s ex Perth – its just that now you have to go via somewhere, be it Perth or Reunion,
The point of our recent article “8.3 Million Potential Australian Long Haul Tourists To Mauritius ?” was to highlight the capacity that Australia’s outbound tourism market has to offer and showcase Mauritius as an affordable destination, which it is.
In 2011, Mauritius had a total of 764,999 tourists according to released figures.
That is about 64,999 more Australians that visited Bali – yet it is 250,000 Australian’s LESS than visited Los Angeles the last two years in a row – LET ALONE core island holiday markets like Fiji, Thailand, Hawaii, New Zealand, USA, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tahiti where hundreds of thousands holiday every year.
@HawaiianAir to explore additional #Sydney frequencies & new Australian gateway opportunities – read more in @travel_daily
— Travel Daily (@travel_daily) February 17, 2012
Oh and i almost forgot – none of this accounts for cruising – the flavour of the last 5 years be it big, small, river or sea, cruising in Australia has by far and away seen the largest growth in the retail travel sector.
Australian tour operators like Above and Beyond Holidays are struggling to make sense of the move – and are trying to deal with all the affected passengers.
Your average Australian tourist will not travel from the east coast to Mauritius when they have daily, direct services on premium carriers to Bali, Phuket, Bangkok, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Singapore and Fiji. Sydney siders also have direct flights to Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Tahiti, Samoa and Tonga.
We hope to see enough Australians travel to Mauritius with Air Austral, that Air Mauritius has no choice but to reinstate flights to the east coast and show some faith and respect in the Australian market with a coordinated awareness campaign in conjunction with the MTPA.
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The TravMedia Asia Daily is out! bit.ly/kQcHgT ? Top stories today via @nicksavageimt
— TravMedia Asia (@TravMediaAsia) February 17, 2012
Air Mauritius will cease flying to Sydney and Melbourne from the end of May less than a year after debuting Sydney on 10 Jul 2011
— Beachcomber Hotels (@Beachcomber_) February 16, 2012
#AirAustral has reloaded flights from Reunion to #Sydney & #Noumea into GDSs for travel beyond 25 Mar | #UUuturn
— Travel Daily (@travel_daily) February 17, 2012
