International airfares continue rising and agents are advised to encourage their clients to book sooner rather than later to avoid being caught out by high ticket prices.
Iata DG Willie Walsh warns that prices of airline tickets will continue to soar as fuel costs rise.
Oil prices have jumped as economies recover from the COVID pandemic, the increases mostly due to the war in Ukraine, according to the BBC. These costs will be felt by travellers.
Walsh said fuel prices were now at record highs, and that oil was the single biggest element of an airline's cost base.
"It's inevitable that ultimately the high oil prices will be passed through to consumers in higher ticket prices,” he adds.
Walsh took the opportunity to warn airports that are already struggling to cope, to adjust their schedules as soon as possible so they can accommodate more passengers ahead of peak travel season over the Christmas holidays, singling out Heathrow in particular as an airport that had struggled with high volumes of passengers and understaffing recently. "They clearly did not provide sufficient resources to deal with that level of activity, so you would have to be critical of Heathrow."
Analysts at CBRE Hotels Research expect hotel rates to rise to pre-pandemic levels soon, with the average price of a hotel room in the US increasing almost 7% from last year, reaching US$134 (R2 475).
Airfares alone rose 33% between August 2021 and 2022 in the US, according to the Consumer Price Index by the US Department of Labor.
"Book everything now," Tim Hentschel, CEO of HotelPlanner, told USA Today. "This will ensure availability and act as a hedge against inflation and ongoing cost increases. If you wait until November and December, your winter holiday travel will only be more expensive."
In a recent poll run by Travel News, nearly half (46%) of respondents, South African travel agents, said international airfares had increased more than 40% since October 2021.
Around a quarter (26%) of respondents perceived the increase to be in the range of 31-40%; 28% believed the increase to be 30% or less.
