What impact did the Sochi Games have on flight traffic patterns and fares?

As the Sochi Winter Olympic Games draws to a close, number-crunching by Amadeus has shown an increase in flight seat capacity of 150% in the region during the event. The company looked at air traffic data to Sochi via its aviation analytics tool to understand more about what impact the event has had in Russia and Europe. Key takeaways from the study are presented below:

• Moscow is the main hub that connects to Sochi. Among the 1,300 flights to Sochi, 1,000+  are domestic flights and 75% of these originate in one of Moscow's three airports.
• Overall seat capacity to Sochi in February went up by nearly 150,000 seats (150% above normal).
• On average, there are 27 daily flights servicing Moscow-Sochi route. To give a relative comparison on global context,  there are 30 daily flights servicing the New York-London route.
• Frankfurt and London were the top two European origin cities for flights to Sochi.
• In 2014, 60 direct flights were added from Frankfurt to Sochi. Interestingly, there are no direct flights from UK/France to Sochi.
• During the Olympics, average cost of return flight from Moscow to Sochi is Euro 600. After Olympics season, the cost drops down to Euro 100.

We checked for return flight prices from Moscow to Sochi - For travel dates of February 21-22, the lowest price in Expedia was $949.

However, the same search parameter for March 21-22 (exactly a month later) travel date is costing $139, almost seven times cheaper than the above fare.

Due to the incredible spike in fare, breaking the flight journey into more than one leg would result in a cost saving.

For example: In an international flight, instead of booking a direct flight to Sochi, a flight booking to Moscow, and an another flight from Moscow to Sochi would result in a cheaper fare.

While this being the case in flight-related scenarios in Sochi, things aren't looking too positive in the hotel segment. Earlier this month, ReviewPro analysed web reviews on 100 OTAs and other sites over the past 12 months and reported that 52% of reviews left against the 81 properties in the Krasnodar area are positive, with 16% negative and 32% neutral. Also, journalists tweeted about their uncomfortable hotel stay experience in Sochi. To top it all, on February 20, US Olympian Kate Hansen tweeted that she found a wolf walking in her hotel hall. She also took a video of the incident and posted in YouTube. In less than two days since the incident , the message has been retweeted 2,500 times and the YouTube video has clocked more than two million views.