MasterCard Releases Post COVID -19 Recovery Insights In Africa, Middle East

MasterCard on Sunday released a Post COVID-19  Recovery Insight that will help travelers to key in into travel trends in the air and on the ground in Africa and the Middle East.

The report stated that global travel recovery remains uneven: a rebound in ground travel and pick-up in domestic flight bookings showing encouraging signs.

This is contained in a statement issued by David Mann, the Chief Economist of MasterCard for the Middle East and Africa (MEA) in Lagos.

Mann said that the report, developed by the MasterCard Economics Institute, drew on aggregated and anonymized sales activity across the global MasterCard network to better understand the next phase for travel, its drivers, and challenges.

“The report includes the balance between leisure and business, local and long-distance, saving and spending. The report also looked at the spending categories seeing an uptick and the signal for travel recovery.

“There are indicators of recovery across some markets in the Middle East and  Africa, for example, gas spending in Nigeria and Egypt are already above 2019 peaks.

“Global gasoline spending is up by 13 percent from its previous peak in 2019. In Egypt and Nigeria, spendings at gas stations are already higher than their 2019 peaks, while in the UAE and in Kenya, they have equalised previous levels.

“Air travel remains down significantly globally although the trajectory is upwards. In markets like the UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, international flight bookings are climbing, but are still at a fraction of where they were before the pandemic began.”

He said that global business travel lagged behind global leisure travel by approximately four months.

In the Middle East and Africa though, there was a closer correlation to leisure and business travel growth, he said.

“The limited border reopenings have proven to be challenging for travelers and the travel industry alike. But select open corridors are showing partial recovery.”

According to him, flights out of the Middle East and Africa are gradually improving, with intra-regional travel to Egypt and the United Arab Emirates most notable.

Raj Seshadri, President of Data and Services of  MasterCard, said the past year had only reinforced how important travel was – to our connection with friends, family, and the broader world, to our business communities, and to our personal fulfillment.

“The economic implications of tourism are vast, with virtually no industry untouched when travelers stay home.

“Through Recovery Insights, we have helped airlines redesign travel routes, retailers in rejigging inventory and cities understand shifts in neighborhood spending.

“It’s about enabling smarter decisions for better outcomes today and tomorrow,” he noted.