The number of Beirut’s International airport passengers continued to fall down in the first 11 months of 2020 as it recorded 2.26 million (M) compared to 8.14M passengers during the same period last year. Total arrivals alone dropped by an annual 74.55% to reach 1M by November 2020. By the same token, Departures slumped by 71.33% year-on-years to reach 1.17M passengers for the same period. Further, the number of transit passenger’s increased by a yearly 0.43% to 78,491 passengers by November 2020.
Lebanon is still suffering from an unprecedented financial crisis since October 2019, as youth especially are facing fears and uncertainty concerning their future in Lebanon. As a result, the number of departures has doubled during the last three months. In details, according to “Macrotrends”, the current net migration rate for Lebanon in 2020 increased by 47.19% compared to 2019.
In the upcoming months, the number of total departures is likely to grow as the economic crisis deepens in Lebanon and the uncertainty about the future encourage more youth to immigrate. Meanwhile, the number of tourists is not expected to improve as the coronavirus pandemic is still spreading around the world.
In tandem, data on occupancy as per E&Y benchmark survey revealed that the occupancy rate at Beirut’s 4-and 5-star hotels fell to a low of 15% by September 2020, down by 57.2 percentage points (pp) compared to the same period last year. As for the average room rate and Room yield they slumped from $199 and $143 by September 2019, to unprecedented lows of $159 and $23 by September 2020, respectively.
Beirut’s Airport Activity By November 2020
Sources: BlomInvest, Beirut International Airport