Ann: UPDATE HY21 Results Call Briefing, page-6

From the SMH article 18 January
-------------------------------
Webjet chief executive John Guscic has criticised snap decisions bystate governments to close their borders as the ASX-listed travel groupprepares to battle Expedia and Booking.com in the market for online hotelbookings.

"Australia clearly needs to do a better job aligning stateactivities and developing consistent guidelines to determine when and whyborders can be shut," Webjet CEO John Guscic says. "Until thathappens, it’s going to diminish consumer confidence in booking tickets."

Chiefexecutive John Guscic says Webjet will be profitable once the travel marketrecovers to 50 per cent of previous levels.

The recent moves by state governments to abruptly reimpose bordercontrols in the wake of Syndey's northern beaches COVID-19 outbreak have been acruel setback for Australia's travel industry, which has been battered by theglobal pandemic.

Webjetwas forced to raise $346 million in a deeply discounted equity raising inApril, and then another €100 million ($163 million) via a convertible note inJuly before unveiling a $143 million loss for 2020. Its share price, at $4.89on Friday, is half what it was a year ago, although is well above its Aprilnadir of $2.26.

"We made a decision early on to raise a significant amount ofcapital - we knew that there’d be an uneven recovery and that it was nevergoing to be as simple as a first wave," says Guscic via a Zoom call fromTunis, where he has waited out the pandemic (he's normally based in Mallorca,Spain).

That and a rigorous cost cutting drive that included sacking 800 of its2400 staff means the group will be able to outlast the virus, he says, and putsit in a prime position to capitalise on a radically changed global travelmarket in which many competitors have fallen by the wayside.

"Everything’s been geared around taking costs out, being efficientand being ready to utilise technologies that haven’t been deployed in ourindustry to make sure we’re a more profitable business in 2025 than we were in2019," he says.

While best known in Australia for its consumer-facing air ticket bookingwebsite, the company has since 2018 made most of its money from its industrybusiness WebBeds.

The business wholesales hotel rooms across Europe, the Americas, theAsia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa by making mass, discountedaccommodation bookings and then on-selling the rooms to travel agents, touroperators and airlines.

Now the company is in the process of building a new consumer facingonline hotel bookings site which will launch in the second half of 2021.

"It’s one of the strategic drivers that we’ve thought about for along time and we’ve waited to come up with an idea that we think iscompelling," Guscic says. "If [customers] are planning their airtickets, we’ve got to make it compelling for them to book their hotels with us[too]."

In doing so, Webjet will be going more directly head-to-head with theglobal behemoths Expedia and Booking.com which dominate the online hotelbooking space.

"We’re not shy of the battle," says Guscic."Booking[.com] has been a global behemoth who have engorged themselves onevery market they have entered into and we’d like to think that our newoffering will give them something to think about."

Guscic sees a gradual recovery in global travel with two-thirds ofairline capacity returning to the skies and two-thirds of hotels reopening bythe end of 2021, before the industry hits 80 to 90 per cent capacity in 2022.

Booking[.com] has been a global behemoth who have engorged themselves onevery market they have entered into and we’d like to think that our newoffering will give them something to think about

While declining to give a timeframe, Guscic says that following itscost-cutting initiatives Webjet only needs the travel market to return to 50per cent of its previous levels for it be profitable again.

Leisure travel will be the main driver, he says, with the videoconferencing technology most professionals have become accustomed during thepandemic massively denting business travel demand.

When Australian state borders were open, Guscic says Webjet captured 10per cent of all airline bookings compared to around 5 per cent normally.