Cebu Pacific's Lance Gokongwei Advises Travelers to Book Flights Early

Cebu Pacific is keeping fares "attractive" even with soaring fuel prices, its president and CEO Lance Gokongwei said Wednesday, advising travelers to plan their vacations ahead.

While the country's largest airline had to increase fares to keep up with rising fuel costs, Gokongwei said Cebu Pacific will continue to offer promos to travelers.

"We will continue to have these very attractive fares because, again, part of our reason for being is... to enable them to be confident again in travel," he told reporters.

READ: Cebu Pacific's Local Operations are Back to 100% Capacity

"We're still getting people to go back to the habit of planning ahead their vacations. Nawala 'yun over the last two years. Dati customers would plan six months, one year ahead. Now, the customer behavior is two weeks, one month ahead," he added.

The travel industry was among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic as governments shut borders to control the spread of the virus. While travel has resumed early this year, soaring fuel prices have burdened people worldwide.

READ: Expensive Fuel Hurts So Bad, When Do You Say Enough is Enough?

Gokongwei said Cebu Pacific was working to bring back its workforce size to pre-pandemic capacity by early next year.

"I guess by early next year, we'll be back to where we were 2019," he said, noting that Cebu Pacific had some 4,000 workers before COVID-19 hit.

Workers who were laid off because of the pandemic are prioritized for rehiring, he added.

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