ARC Sales - Stay down

January my friends was not a blip.

But lets be clear here - we are accounting for some aberration.

While total $ value sales were down 26% you have to really look at the number of tickets and the number of days.

So the extra day accounts for 3.6% extra activity. There are other considerations if you want to split hairs such as the number of work days. But in all we should expect that transactions are off a net 15% Y/Y. The falling off in yield is another example of the issues facing everyone. The airlines and the hotels are experiencing some pretty heft yield drops.

This is now exposing a soft underbelly of politicians. IE that the taxation model comes out pretty clearly. Taxes can make up a large chunk of the price now. We have fares across the Atlantic for nearly close to what RyanAir has been proposing. We have fares on legacy carriers between European Capitals for less than Ryanair (just have a look FRA-LON).

So still not healthy. But read between the lines.

Cheers