Costa Rica is part of the regional growth of the Avianca airline, which as of this month of December, reactivated two routes with a significant flow of passengers to destinations in Mexico and the United States.
As of December 2, the San José – Washington route resumed, while since last week, San José – Cancún was resumed, which represents the strategy of attracting visitors for the high tourism season. The region is extremely key to the point-to-point strategy of the airline; that is, non-stop, where Costa Rica and El Salvador play a key role.
A transition season
2022 became a transition season for the airline, which after the passing of the pandemic hopes that 2023 will be the year of consolidation of the business model. In this sense, the Central American region is the one that stands out in the recovery process.
To date, the countries of the isthmus have already exceeded the levels of passengers registered in 2019 by 10%, as indicated by the Avianca authorities during the final event of the year, where they presented the figures for 2022 and projections for the coming years.
A key decision
“Markets such as Central America are already practically recovered, even with better figures than we had before Covid-19, and for this reason, we are making a very strategic commitment to continue opening new routes,” said María Carolina Cortés, Director of Communications. This is a key decision for the airline, due to the type of traveler it represents, who is going to visit relatives in North America, facilitating this point-to-point strategy.
“Central America is an extremely important region for us (…) When you see the network strategy, you realize that in this point-to-point strategy, what we do is decongest Bogotá with other cities within Colombia, but we also connect many cities from and to towards El Salvador and Costa Rica, when you see the strategy you realize a San José – Washington that did not exist, of a Costa Rica, Ecuador and Argentina that go to Central America, or a San José Medellín and a San José Cartagena”, added Cortes.
Some 23 million passengers transported to date globally, allow us to project that the airline will end 2022 with some 24 million people mobilized, as part of its announcement of seven new routes and another 15 that will be reactivated from December 8th.
On the other hand, it is expected that in 2023 more than 20 new routes will be offered and around 30 aircraft will be added, between transporting tourists and cargo.
This also implies a change in the business model, since Avianca will combine the attributes of the airline with the “Low-Cost”, which will include, for the first time, the sale of more than 40 products within the flights, allowing it to be the customer who decides what he wants to consume.
Low-Cost attributes
“We are talking about the Low-Cost attributes that we are incorporating, the increasingly flexible product for everyone, the concept of four custom sizes, the reconfiguration of seats that allows the customer to choose the level of spending and seat in the one who wants to fly; as well as the food that we are selling now, which has been a very successful start”, said Adrián Neuhause, president and CEO of Avianca.
During the high season, the company will transport more than 4 million customers with more than 17,000 flights and 650,000 seats available per week, connecting with 24 countries and 67 destinations in America and Europe.
The price of fuel, the inflation of the countries and the doubts of a possible recession are the reasons why the company has not been able to lower the price of tickets on most of its routes.
Routes Opened For Costa Rica
These are the routes that were opened or resumed for Costa Rica in 2022, which shows that the recovery of the sector is already reaching great heights:
• San Jose – Medellin
• San Jose – Cartagena
• San Jose – Washington • San Jose – Quito – Buenos Aires
