Due to high inflation, the cost of air tickets rose 23%

Inflation It has touched all economic sectors and especially the pockets of Colombians. More and more people and companies have had to redesign the way they use their resources in order to continue manufacturing or buying products and services.

(Read: Do not buy dollars, Petro’s recommendation to Colombians).

And it is not only a matter of perspective, according to the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Dane), through the report of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in June, the annual variation has already reached 9.67%.

Tourism

As in other industries, tourism has been affected by increases in inputs that in many cases must cover or pass on to the consumer.

On airline tickets, in this holiday season, tourists have had to see a monthly variation in the price of their plane tickets of more than 10% (June vs. May). And it is that to this is added that the annual variation (June 2021 vs. June 2022), where the prices of tickets reached an increase of 23.68%.

In this regard, the airlines have shown their concern. Latam, for its part, assured that this is due to the increase in airline costs, which according to its estimates is 21% compared to 2019.

“However, in the first months of the year the rates have increased by about 12% compared to 2019, that is, the rate increase is not enough to cover the costs of the airlines, which goes against the profitability of these airlines.”, Latam said.

The company in turn highlighted the increase in fuel prices that has been more than 52% due to the increase in oil prices.

To this, David Valderrama, commercial director of Satena adds the devaluation of the peso against the dollar in the case of international flights. “Airlines try to sustain their fares by lowering the dollar value,” Valderrama said.

For his part, William Shaw, president of Ultra Air supports the reasons of his competitors. “We cannot also underestimate that the incentives that have been dismantled and that we had in the pandemic to increase tourism (…) They are going to make the plane ticket more expensive,” he said.

Another item to highlight were the prices in the tourist packages that in one year rose 10%.

In this regard, the Colombian Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies (Anato), joins what has been said by the airlines.

(Also: Recession or stagflation: the economic future for Latin America).

“We are very concerned about this situation, because although tourism had been showing a good recovery rate, we believe that these new conditions could affect travel agency reservations for the next holiday season,” said Paula Cortés, executive president of Anato.

With this scenario of rising inputs, businessmen believe that it could affect the growth target for 2022.

PAULA GALEANO BALAGUERA