Travel, Transportation & Logistics

Air transportation 

Air transportation includes passenger air-travel, property transportation by air and has helped make the world a global village. Individual passengers can travel million miles within hours and end-to-end air transportation services are widely available for time-sensitive documents, small parcels, or high value items. Air cargo operators also provide the export infrastructure that small and medium sized businesses, especially e-commerce small businesses, need to grow internationally without investing in their own supply chain.

In 2020, air cargo demand reached an all-time high and contributed $59.1 billion to the U.S gross domestic product. It continued to grow during the first half of 2021. 

Water transportation 

This sector includes carriers, seaports, terminals, and the workforce that transport freight, commodities, and passengers along domestic and international waterways. The international water transportation subsector facilitates international trade between countries and carries around 90% of the world trade. Nearly 70% of all U.S. international merchandise trade is by water transportation. More than 44,500 businesses operate in that subsector and employ nearly 2.5 million workers. European companies dominate the international water transportation market with a French company leading the way. 

Rail and bus transportation 

Passengers may travel by rail or by bus; and goods may be transported by railroad. A passenger railway moves the people and helps connect large and small communities throughout a country at a more energy efficient cost than traveling by car. America’s freight rail, a nearly 140,000-mile rail transportation network, dispatches throughout the country high volumes of heavy cargo and raw materials such as industrial materials that supply factories, or finished products such as consumer goods that fill shopping carts. The fuel efficient, privately funded network employs more than 1 million workers, delivers millions of tons of goods per year, and serves nearly every industrial, wholesale, retail, and resource-based sector of the U.S. economy. Freight railroads for instance haul the raw materials used to manufacture auto parts and transport nearly three new America’s cars and light trucks out of four. 

Road transportation  

Transportation of goods or parcels by road is mainly by truck as it helps carry a larger quantity. About 72.50% of the U.S. freight by weight is moved by truck. This represents $791.7 billion in gross freight revenues from trucking. And in 2018 there were 36.9 million trucks (24.20% of all trucks registered) registered and used for commercial purposes. In 2019 the sector employed 7.95 million people including 3.6 million truck drivers. 

Travel & tourism 

The travel and leisure sector comprises transportation organizations, hostels and restaurants, art and attractions, exhibitions, sports and gambling, and other venues. In 2019, the sector employed 334 million workers and contributed $9.20 trillion (10.40%) to the global GDP. International travelers’ spending amounted to $1.7 trillion and one newly created job out of four was in the travel & tourism sector. The sector was negatively impacted by travel restrictions and stay-at-home measures imposed by governments worldwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic. International travelers’ spending was down by $4.5 trillion to $4.7 trillion and 62 million jobs were lost. 

For example, during the COVID-19 health crisis and the subsequent economic downturn, passenger travel activities were limited. In June 2021, U.S. international air travel was still down by 61% compared to 2019. As a result, passenger airlines posted deep losses in 2020 and were still in the red in the first half of 2021 with the eleven largest U.S. passenger airlines posting a $4.3 billion pre-tax losses in total. Likewise, the travel sector profitability took a significant hit. And in May 2021 ridership on U.S. intercity rail is down by 61% compared to May 2019. Judging by past experiences, it may take years for air-travel demand to recover.  

The transportation and logistics industry is highly competitive and composed of fragmented marketplaces. Organizations in a given geographic area compete on customer service, reliability, scope and scale of operations, technological capabilities, and price. 

Some of the key success factors that we see include:

• Sustainability : use and encourage the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
• Contribute to the mass production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) : SAF is synthetized from renewal feedstocks such as municipal waste, agricultural residues, and waste lipids
• Move to sustainable transportation including the use of hybrid and electric vehicles 
• Embracing sustainability regulatory measures 
• Improving commercial drivers’ recruitment and retention 
• Use of technology to build resilience, improve your business performance, and fleet operations including:
  > Telematic system such as fleet management software program to monitor the real time location, performance and effectiveness of drivers and the operating condition of vehicles.
  > Future railway mobile communication system (FRMCS), a broadband-ready technology that will enable you to improve safety and operational efficiency, support innovative passenger services and accelerate your digital transformation.