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We talked with David German, General Director for Central and South America of Avianca on Ecuador and market prospects.
within a complex landscape for the entire airline industry, which begins to see slight rays of hope, although threatened by the Delta mutation, there are many plans that are going to be revealed by the airlines.
Despite the crisis, airlines are beginning to see growth opportunities with the activation of routes that they did not operate before or betting on new markets not previously exploited to seek new sources of income.
What is coming with Avianca Ecuador
In this context, we were able to speak exclusively with David Aleman, who was CEO of Avianca Ecuador between 2016 and 2018, so his knowledge and experience in our country is more than extensive and this is what he told us:
How is Avianca Ecuador right now??
The equivalent to 2019, we are currently evolving reaching the 50% of pre-pandemic supply, which is excellent news, we came from very low indicators and now reach the 50% this is good news for Ecuador.
Since Avianca began to operate mainly in Galapagos as one of our main destinations for the leisure customer, we are working to reactivate tourism with confidence in the destination, expecting to increase between 15% and the 20% our offer in high season and be able to maintain it until the end of the year.
Our participation in the market is recovering with more frequencies in the Ecuadorian market towards Manta and Guayaquil, which go hand in hand with the increase towards Baltra and San Cristóbal.
Our international operation is not less, with 17 weekly frequencies from Quito and 16 from Guayaquil to Bogota, we are with 3 weekly flights from Quito and 2 weekly flights from Guayaquil capturing vaccine tourism to the USA stronger in high season.
We want to reach values close to the 65% O 70% recovery in the market.
Is this recovery due to a market reaction or greater political confidence??
It's a mix of everything, today the reactivation of internal mobility in Ecuador is similar to that of other markets. Quito and Guayaquil traditionally have a lot of traffic, is stimulated again and also domestic tourism, even though the corporate has not yet reached the expected levels given that the face-to-face world has restrictions.
We have found traffic with tourism and internal movement, more leisure tourism especially to Galapagos, but with the particularity that the Ecuadorian is the one who is traveling the most to the Islands, which stimulates the demand in conjunction with the work of the travel agencies that are capturing the local passenger..
On the other hand, what we are doing with Avianca Ecuador is that it will be the first market where the Fly to your Measure will have a greater boost with extra customization for each passenger, We are going to introduce the XS tariff for the domestic market with simple specific attributes, thus stimulating users with a price.
The political environment is certainly much more positive, From abroad, the political situation is perceived as very favorable and we are going to capitalize on it and we believe that it is the best time to go to the market with better options and this is one of the challenges that airlines have, reach all market niches.
¿Avianca low cost?
It is an Avianca for everyone, this is how we are handling it and it is a different segmentation for each group and segments, with an accessible price rate for those who look for the price and also who will contemplate greater attributes with a customization to suit them.
We will not lose the service, we maintain our frequent flyer program, nor our indicators operations where we maintain a 96% of operation on time will change.
We want to access all markets and customers with a value proposition that reaches and meets the expectations of all of them.
with these actions, what percentage of occupancy do you expect to have on your flights?
We have had a lot of detail in the performance and occupation of our flights. We always want to get around the 80% Of occupation, so we can be sure that demand is being stimulated, but it depends on each route.
We are very analytical of the capacity we put on the market by measuring the pulse, thus, our planes and frequencies are responding to the needs of the traditional market.
What is the route growth plan for Ecuador?
There are always growth opportunities, we are closely following the current markets and the Coca where we want to reactivate it once we have a clearer demand.
There are other destinations that we evaluate as Cuenca, which is a valid alternative that we will indeed continue to explore once the traffic equation and our product can compete with customer preference.
The expectation is to connect the main cities and we are running those options and intentions to be able to start those destinations and internationally as well., where as a Holding we are analyzing point-to-point routes without necessarily going through Bogotá or El Salvador like what we are doing from Medellín, Saint Joseph, San Pedro Sula and others.
We seek the simplification of the mobilization of our passengers and whenever it makes sense we will evaluate when there is a volume market and with the approach of the central governments., as has been expressed by the current government and the Ministry of Tourism in increasing connectivity and we are aligned with this initiative.
What would you expect from the new government in Ecuador?
We closely follow the declarations and policies of the Government. Working on agreements between countries is a great help in terms of bilateral agreements and working hand in hand in certain markets is essential.
We will look for opportunities to speak with the new government and thus tell them about the common axes that we can work together to achieve the objectives that are being set..
Finally, How is the Avianca fleet in Ecuador currently made up??
We maintain a unique fleet of Airbus A320 aircraft and we are able to incorporate more aircraft, once we are able to meet these demand milestones, we can increase the fleet and reach what we had before with more than 10 planes operating in Ecuador.
We are recovering the domestic market in the country and on that basis we are focusing our fleet. There is commitment and the intention to keep Ecuador on the map as a strategic market and thanks to the positive steps within the Chapter 11 that has been successful we can continue to take very big steps until the end of the year.
The idea is to keep growing.
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We thank David Aleman for his time and collaboration in discussing Avianca Ecuador and its growth plans, with whom we will also speak Live in YouTube the 4 from July to 20:30 hours.
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