The Electrified All-American Summer Road Trip

Good morning from Skift. It’s Monday, September 19. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

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Episode Notes

Electric cars have grown in popularity in recent years with consumers increasingly looking for greener ways to travel, but how can their infrastructure be improved? Skift asked Senior Engineering Manager Mike Linden to write a travel diary, outlining what he learned from a road trip in an electric car this summer with his family.

An early electric car adopter, Linden thoroughly documents his family’s trip in a blue Telsa his daughter dubbed Elsa, including stops on the road and detailed data about each charging experience. His family regularly used Tesla Superchargers, which are designed to charge electric cars in 30 minutes. He also listed challenges he and family faced during the drive from New Jersey to Florida and back. Linden wrote he didn’t use a seemingly suitable clothes dryer at one Airbnb to charge his car because he was unsure if he had permission to do so.

Although Linden said that driving Elsa wasn’t difficult, he acknowledges that electric car travel is still in its infancy. He noted that electric car infrastructure is in need of substantial improvement. Linden said while he never worried about a Supercharger being broken, that isn’t the case for other charging networks. He also noted that Superchargers are usually relegated to the back of parking lots, which sometimes necessitates long walks to bathrooms.

Next, Greek carrier Aegean Airlines rode its country’s strong travel recovery to a profitable second quarter, reports Jay Shabat, Senior Analyst at Airline Weekly, a Skift brand.

Aegean reported on Friday it recorded an $11 million net profit for the April-to-June period, driven in large part by a surge in tourism to Greece. Greece was just one of just European countries to have fully recovered to 2019 airport traffic levels, the other being Luxembourg. The country’s travel rebound was strongest on its island resorts, such as Corfu. August airport passenger volumes on Corfu were up 20 percent from pre-Covid figures.

But despite Aegean’s second quarter profits, the airline was in the red $24 million during the first half of 2022 due to heavy first quarter losses.

Finally, U.S. broker JLL Hotels & Hospitality sees growing investor interest in select service hotels, properties with limited amenities and staff, reports Senior Hospitality Reporter Sean O’Neill in this week’s Early Check-In.

Although O’Neill writes select service properties have long been a key part of the hotel mix, JLL’s Americas CEO Kevin Davis believes more investors and wealthy families view select service hotels as assets. O’Neill notes the pandemic highlighted the advantages of running a property that requires less labor to be profitable, adding select service hotels can be more resilient in a downtown.

While JLL’s core business will remain full-service hotels, Davis said the company will hire more staff to run its select service operations.