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Background:
- Virgin Australia has experienced a surge in website traffic and booking demand following the Victorian and Queensland governments roadmap to re-opening borders.
- Website traffic to www.virginaustralia.com soared over 100 per cent yesterday following the Queensland Government’s announcement, with the airline recording a 134 per cent increase in overall bookings. Similarly on Sunday, bookings on services between Melbourne-Sydney doubled following the Victorian Government announcement.
- The most popular flights booked yesterday were (both directions):
- Melbourne-Brisbane/Brisbane-Melbourne
- Brisbane-Cairns/Cairns-Brisbane
- Melbourne-Gold Coast/Gold Coast-Melbourne
- Melbourne-Sunshine Coast/Sunshine Coast-Melbourne
- Brisbane-Townsville/Townsville-Brisbane
- Travellers are showing confidence to book ahead with nearly half of all bookings made yesterday for travel during December and January.
- Travellers are increasingly using their Velocity Frequent Flyer points to book flights with the loyalty program recording a 150 per cent increase on redemption bookings yesterday which was the single largest day for Points spending since June 2021.
Commentary from a Virgin Australia Group spokesperson:
Virgin Australia welcomes the arrangements foreshadowed by the Victorian and Queensland Governments to re-open their states to interstate travellers once vaccination thresholds are met.
Already we can see travellers are excited by the prospects of flying again, which has been evident by the significant uplift in website traffic and bookings.
Overall, we recorded a 134 per cent increase in bookings yesterday and Velocity Frequent Flyer experienced its single largest day of Points redemption bookings since June, which is a fantastic result and snapshot of the pent-up demand to come once borders re-open.
Virgin Australia will continue to review our schedule and add flights in line with demand as travel restrictions ease.
We’re also continuing to give travellers generous booking flexibility and just last week we announced the extension of our Flexible Flying policy for travel to 30 April 2021. It means that travellers can have confidence to make a booking with Virgin Australia now knowing they can easily change it if they need to.
