Brussels Airlines (SN) sees an increase of leisure travellers in business class on short and medium-haul flights, Belgium‘s prime news agency Belga reports. Rising prices in 2024? It seems tourists don’t really cut in their holiday budget.
Long gone are the days business class was the exclusive realm of people on business trips and in extenso business people using their money and/or miles programmes for their leisure travels.Â
Brussels Airlines now also offers business class for all its short and medium distances. On short-haul flights and on medium-haul flights using the same Airbus A319, A320 and A320neo airplanes, business class offers the same seat, but the middle seats on the the 3-3 rows are left empty. And of course you get (much) nicer service.
“This means we remain very flexible: if there is demand, we can offer business class. If there is no demand, we can fill the seats as regular seats. As a result, there is still a difference with business class on long-haul flights, where a large part is reserved exclusively”, SN spokesperson Joëlle Neeb says.
But flying business class also means you can go through check-in and security faster, you can board and disembark first and of course you can use the business class lounge.
Brussels Airlines follows the trend set by parent company Lufthansa, which previously started with its other full-service subsidiaries such as Swiss and Austrian Airlines.
“We have tested business class in a number of tourist destinations, including Tenerife, and we see it being successful”, Neeb says.
“The popularity obviously depends on many factors, such as the route and the time of year, but there is certainly an increase. On some routes we have twice as many business class passengers compared to 2019. About 5 percent of individual bookings opt for the upgrade. But for some destinations, such as Málaga and Tenerife, this can rise to 10 percent.”
Business trip
The amount of business trips has hugely dropped since the pandemic. Brussels Airlines talks about about 20 percent fewer business travelers. To fill that gap, companies are trying to appeal to regular tourists.Â
“Whether a plane is completely empty or fully booked, the costs are the same for the airline. The way to recover those costs is to increase the return on each seat”, says aviation economist Wouter Dewulf of the University of Antwerp.
“The fact that you can fly business to more and more destinations is a consequence of this. Brussels is joining the full-service companies again and I think that is a strategically good move. Airlines such as Brussels can also distinguish themselves from low-cost airlines such as Ryanair.”
Brussels Airlines cannot say exactly how much more expensive such a ‘business’ ticket is. Airfares are notoriously dynamic, driven by supply and demand.
“Generally speaking, you have to take into account that business is a lot more expensive. But it may also be that due to supply and demand of economy seats, the business is cheaper”, says Neeb.Â
Belga found in a quick sample search for this summer that you pay 150 to 200 euros extra per person, per flight for Tenerife, Tangiers or Palma de Mallorca.
Luxury
But that doesn’t seem to be an obstacle, Dewulf says. “There is a willingness to pay a little more for experience or luxury. Not as much as what a business traveler would spend, but still. In the United States we even see that the large airlines have performed much better than the low-cost airlines in recent quarters.”
“We may save on groceries, but not on our holidays”, says Jan van der Borg, tourism expert at the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven).
“Holidays have become a ‘necessary good’. The COVID-19 pandemic may have a little bit to do with this, but we are actually returning to the trend of 2019, which was an absolute record year. Both in terms of the number of travelers and what was spent on holidays per traveler. And the masses are looking for ‘luxury’ in the old-fashioned sense: they want business class, they want experience and they want to pay for it.”
Our experience
Steve and I are going to Athens (yes, again) in the summer as was the case for Easter 2023, I did find a very attractive price to fly business class with Brussels Airlines. But the flight hours were really clashing with the cruise schedule so we booked Aegean. Their business class rate was too much. So we’ll fly economy.
Quid long-haul?
Belga doesn’t say anything about long-haul flights. Brussels Airlines flies to New York, Washington DC and to quite a few cities in Africa. But no word on these.
It’s on those journeys flying business is a real treat and they will cost you.
Japan
As Danny, Sam, Michel and I are planning a Japan trip for the second half of 2025, we are looking at flying business class.
Prices for business class are steep. In simulations, as it’s too early to book, we don’t see to find the mega deals we found for Australia 2020. Of course, we booked those flights in 2019 and five years ago the world was different. Also, Tokyo Ãs an expensive destinations.
We want to use our saved up airmiles, but that seems almost impossible. Star Alliance offers near to no options. Airlines ‘open’ only a few (business) seats for miles uses per flight, if any.
We will be bound to hard fixed dates. So frustratingly, it seems we won’t be able to use our miles.
But it’s an idea for a future blogpost.
Brussels Airlines news
- Brussels Airlines’ The Loft wins Europe’s Leading Airline Lounge award for the sixth time in a row.
- Brussels Airlines drops new uniforms and more inclusive style guide.
- Brussels Airlines’ first Airbus A320neo performs its maiden flight to Vienna.
- Brussels Airlines and Tomorrowland party flights to use 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel.