Covid-19

The pandemic has not only put a severe brake on company meetings and seminars. Incentive trips, designed to reward corporate clients and employees, have been similarly frozen due to the health risks and border closures, but also for budgetary reasons. Melia Hotels International, for whom these...

It is now compulsory for anyone travelling from an area considered to be at risk to register using an online application. These include France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. You need to log on beforehand to the www.einreiseanmeldung.de website. The page is available in French, although the country names still appear in German. You need to...

This is a real event in Canada. Since 2 November, certain international passengers have been exempt from the 14-day mandatory confinement requirement on Canadian territory. Admittedly, this measure only concerns Calgary international airport (Alberta) for the moment. However, it is a first step towards a possible standardisation of entry conditions into Canada...

Air France is therefore drawing the necessary conclusions. The airline is returning to a flexible weekly management of its frequencies and destinations. The airline states on its website that "the short and medium-haul flight schedule is up to date until 8 November inclusive. However, last-minute cancellations are possible. Adaptations to our...

Bertrand Gosselin, CEO of Thalys, posted a strong and unequivocal message on his Twitter account on Wednesday: "Thalys is going through the biggest crisis in its history. [We] have reduced our offer to a minimum with regret but with responsibility. When better times return, we will need you, our customers,...

Faced with the restrictions on travel imposed by the confinement, SNCF is reviewing its programme. The rail company will be significantly reducing its offer, which will be limited to 30% of the usual service on the TGV network from 5 November. The high-speed offer therefore remains more substantial than what was put in place at the time...

Between 'visios' for work and virtual aperitifs with friends, the Covid-19 crisis has given a boost to the market for videoconferencing solutions. Since the start of the pandemic, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet have doubled and tenfolded their audience respectively, to reach 75 million and 50 million subscribers. Pure player...

Will the reconfinement have a significant impact on the hotel industry, or will it be limited in the end, given that passenger numbers are already at their lowest? Olivier Petit - The reconfinement, and above all the restrictions on inter-regional and international travel, particularly outside the Schengen area, will structurally limit the flow of travellers, and therefore the need for accommodation. This will not...

The Hôtel du Louvre reopened in summer 2019 after several years of renovation work. Why such a long renovation? Fanny Guibouret - It was supposed to start in 2014-2015 in order to convert the hotel to our contemporary Andaz brand. But after just a few months of work, we realised that there was a soul in the hotel, that its...

Faced with an unprecedented fall in hotel occupancy, many hoteliers are converting their rooms into workspaces. The Marriott International group is part of this trend, and has announced its Work from Anywhere programme with three packages - Day Pass, Stay Pass and Play Pass...

The return of curfews and population reconfinements in an increasing number of European countries should result in a further slowdown in air traffic. And exacerbate the risk of insolvency for many regional airports in the coming months. This is the alarmist assessment of ACI-Europe, which predicts the disappearance of airports altogether...

On Wednesday evening, the French President made official the reconfinement measure, which has been in force in France since the evening of 29 October and will remain in force until at least 1 December. A progress review will take place in a fortnight' time to reassess the situation. Since Friday, the attestation has been without return to limit restricted travel to...

More than its Asian neighbours, the city-state of Singapore is heavily dependent on global mobility. The city of six million inhabitants has built its economy on trade. It therefore seems essential for the government to gradually reopen its borders to international travellers. In an interview with Bloomberg...

From 12 to 16 October, the GBTA surveyed more than 900 business travel professionals worldwide. The aim was to identify the obstacles to the recovery in business travel, and above all the ways in which the business travel machine could be revived. Their response was clear: travel buyers are impatiently awaiting the deployment of screening systems...

The ADP group, which manages the Paris airports, has revised its traffic forecasts for 2020 downwards. The second wave of the covid pandemic sweeping across Europe is expected to result in a fall in passenger traffic of between 65% and 70% for the whole of 2020. Previous forecasts were still betting...

Since Thursday 22 October, Marseille Provence airport has been the first French hub to be equipped with the new antigen tests, which promise to provide passengers with the results in less than 20 minutes. Officials at the Marseille hub say that this trial phase will be rapidly followed by official deployment. This is scheduled for Monday 26...

A lifeline for air traffic weighed down by the Covid pandemic? That's what European airports, particularly in France, are hoping for with the launch of antigenic tests to detect Covid. The antigen test is carried out in the same way as a PCR test, using swabs taken from the nostrils....

The curfew imposed in nine French cities is shedding new light on the hotel concept of staycation. This is particularly the case in Paris, where luxury establishments, particularly affected by the absence of international travellers, are turning to local customers to invite them to enjoy their evenings out...

Like many hoteliers, are you seeing a timid recovery in business for Balladins hotels? Fabrice Beyer - Indeed. After a summer in which, with the exception of the Paris region, occupancy figures were good, September was a mixed bag. The fine weather sustained demand from leisure customers, but the...

At a time when the events industry is being dramatically affected by cancellations and postponements, Bordeaux is determined to support the MICE market and save what can still be saved. We're working on an operation to encourage companies in New Aquitaine to keep their meetings scheduled until the end of the year," explains Amélie...