Southwest Pulls Back on Leisure Destinations to Refocus on Business Travel
Photo Credit: Southwest Airlines is not finding it hard to hire new talent; it's finding it hard to train new hires fast enough. Southwest Airlines / Stephen M. Keller
Skift Take
Recently retired Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly once predicted 20 percent of the business travel market may never come back after the pandemic. But it's sure looking like that prognostication may prove too pessimistic. The carrier is seeing a faster return of road warriors than it could have expected.
Recent bookings have reversed Southwest Airlines’ formerly dim view of the return of business travel, with March corporate revenue exceeding March 2019. The Dallas-based airline is retooling its network away from some of the leisure-focused destinations it focused on during the depths of the pandemic to business markets as it prepares for road warriors to return.
Former CEO Gary Kelly, who stepped down earlier this year, famously said he thought about 20 percent of business travel will never return after the pandemic recedes, due to the changing nature of work and tools like videoconferencing. It still hasn’t returned in full, but it’s recovering faster than the airline expected. March corporate travel revenue was only 36 percent off the same month in 2019, compared with 70 percent below 2019 in January. Southwest is reducing the number of flights it operates to and within Hawaii and reallocating those resources to shorter-haul flights in bu
