Skift Take
Great early morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, April 6, in New York City City. Here’s what you need to learn about business of travel today.
Rashaad Jorden
Today’s edition of Skift’s day-to-day podcast describes why JetBlue wishes to purchase Spirit, Sonder’s hotel-like moves, and Sri Lanka’s difficulties with its most significant tourist market.
Listen
Subscribe
Episode Notes JetBlue Airways has actually surprised the air travel market by sending a $3.6 billion quote for inexpensive carrier Spirit Airlines, possibly thwarting Spirit’s planned merger with Frontier Airlines, reports Madhu Unnikrishnan, editor of Airline Weekly, a Skift brand.
Spirit confirmed it had actually gotten an unsolicited offer from JetBlue, which put forth a quote that would offer investors a $700 million premium over the $2.9 billion Frontier-Spirit merger that was revealed in February. If the JetBlue-Spirit offer were to be approved, the two airlines would comprise 8 percent of the U.S. market.
Nevertheless, Unnikrishnan writes a prospective deal with Spirit may not make sense for JetBlue. While Frontier and Spirit both run comparable inexpensive networks tailored toward price-sensitive leisure tourists, JetBlue’s model aims to cater to both leisure and company travelers as it has a premium cabin on some aircraft and flies to popular company locations. Meanwhile, JetBlue shares fell more than 7 percent immediately after the news of its bid for Spirit broke.
Next, short-term rental business Sonder has plans to shock the hospitality market, however it’s calling on its sales team to do what hotel brands generally do. Just what? Deal business worked out rates along with attract groups to its homes, writes Executive Editor Dennis Schaal in his Online Travel Instruction.
Sonder stated last week in its annual financial filing that its sales team would target all service tourists for short-term stays through deals with travel management business like TripActions and Egencia. Sonder added it would target all business travel, including transient and corporate prolonged stay, mentioning groups represent a mostly untapped growth chance for the company.
We end today in Sri Lanka. Already coming to grips with a serious economic crisis in the middle of widespread power failures, its tourist recovery is taking another hit as potential visitors from India– its largest incoming market– are aiming to visit other locations, reports Asia Editor Peden Doma Bhutia.
The turmoil in Sri Lanka is driving tourists from India to reschedule their prepared journeys to the Indian Ocean nation and rather visit destinations such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, according to India-based travel bureau SOTC Travel. In addition, Air India is lowering its India-Sri Lanka flights from April 9, citing restricted need as the reason for its choice.
Tourist to Sri Lanka had been flourishing prior to the continuous crisis. The nation invited more than 100,000 foreign visitors in March 2022, marking the first time it exceeded that mark in a single month since the start of the pandemic.