Oceania is formed by 14 countries (UN Statistics Board) grouped in four macro regions: Australia & New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, the majority of them islands of different sizes. The continent boasts exceptional diversity, turning this area of the world in a bucket-list destination for outdoors, nature and adventure lovers; as well as for travellers, eager to explore the unique cultural expressions and heritage of its native communities.
According to UN Tourism latest year-round data (2023), arrivals (17.46M arrivals in 2019 vs 12.87M in 2023) and international tourist receipts (61.4 USD billion in 2019 vs 57.9 USD billion in 2023) to Oceania is close to reaching 2019 records. As many destinations around the world, the pandemic posed extreme challenges to travel & tourism industry in the region and, for Oceania, recovery took longer: The majority of destinations fully reopened in early 2022, or later than same year, being the restrictions among the toughest globally, similar to some Asian countries, which were key source markets for Oceania’s destinations. Demand reconfigured between 2020 and 2023, where it showed signs of bouncing back to traditional arrivals’ trends.
But, how does 2024 and early 2025 looks like for Oceania, in terms of travel demand? To perform this analysis, we dig into two indicators: seats availability variation and scheduling to understand to what extent connectivity recovered after the pandemic, and Share of Searches Index for Oceania, based on flight searches for the first semester of 2024, to travel throughout 2024 and until late winter 2025.
Air Connectivity, A Shared Challenge for Oceania
Due to its geography, Oceania is highly dependent on the air connectivity, domestic, regional, and international, so it is a crucial competitiveness factor for this continent. According to Mabrian’s travel intelligence, overall regional connectivity to and within Oceania’s countries has not fully recovered after the pandemic. When comparing scheduled inbound and domestic air seats for the second half of 2024 with 2019 same period, for Oceania’s four macro regions that conform Oceania (Australia & New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia), data shows that only Polynesia is 25% above 2019 figures, while Micronesia is -31% below, Melanesia -17%, and Australia & New Zealand are -7% 2019 levels.
“The path to recovery in terms of air capacity is slower when compared to other world regions, in particular some with a strong travel & tourism market, such as Southern Europe, Western Asia or Latin America, recovering +10% to 15% of 2019 seats, posing a relevant challenge to be addressed considering the characteristic insularity of Oceania.”
Carlos Cendra, Partner and Director of Marketing and Communications at Mabrian
Focusing on inbound air seats to scheduled Oceania’s destinations for full year 2024 (compared to 2023 and 2019), Mabrian’s travel intelligence shows that air capacity recovery is progressive, and indicates an uneven recoup of air connectivity in the area favouring four destinations: Tahiti (French Polynesia), Nadi (Fiji), as well as Perth and the Sunshine Coast (Australia).
Tahiti (French Polynesia) increased +29% air seats availability compared 2019 and +1% growth compared to 2023; whereas, since 2019, Nadi (Fiji) grew +24% inbound air seats, +10% when compared to 2023. Perth (+9% more seats than 2019 and +13% year over year) and the Sunshine Coast (+33% more than in 2019, even though reduced -12% since last year) are the exceptions to other Australian destinations, such as Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, or even to Auckland (New Zealand), all of them increasing air connectivity inter-annually, but still below 2019 seats availability.
Finally, when compared to full 2019, scheduled air seats indicate that inbound air connectivity is bouncing back +5% to Auckland (New Zealand), and +4% to both Queenstown (Australia) and to Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea). In fact, the capital of Papua New Guinea features a strong growing trend, as air seats’ availability increases +13% year over year.