COVID-19: Travel search. How repatriation became the main driver

As the COVID-19 coronavirus quietly emerged from the shadows in Wuhan and the news started to spread, CAPA's analysis shows airline searches ("shopping") closely tracked its development, as illustrated in 3Victors data.

IATA director general and CEO, Alexandre de Juniac, said on 24-Mar-2020 that "the airline industry faces its gravest crisis". The same applies to most facets of the travel and tourism sector.

As much of the world has gone into lockdown, a steady decline in travel searches across the major GDSs could have been expected. Mostly that has been the case, but CAPA's analysis of searches recorded by the travel big data technology company, 3Victors, shows some interesting trends, where travel searches have spiked exponentially at key times as the pandemic has spread across the globe.

The pandemic's spread highlights how the coronavirus crisis has influenced travel searches for flights, based on this data.