(Reuters) - U.S. travel and leisure stocks surged on Wednesday after BioNtech SE and Pfizer Inc (NYSE:PFE) said a three-shot course of their COVID-19 vaccine was able to neutralize the new Omicron variant.
Shares of U.S. airlines - including Delta Air Lines Inc (NYSE:DAL), United Airlines Holdings (NASDAQ:UAL) Inc, American Airlines (NASDAQ:AAL) Group Inc and Southwest Airlines (NYSE:LUV) Co - rose between 0.95% and 2.26% in premarket trading.
Their shares were also helped by Southwest's forecast of posting a profit in the fourth quarter as opposed to its earlier projections of a loss on a rebound in travel across the United States and higher fares.
Hotel chains Hyatt Hotels (NYSE:H) Corp, Marriott International (NASDAQ:MAR) Inc, and Hilton Worldwide Holdings (NYSE:HLT) Inc were up between 0.30% and 1.17%, while travel booking websites Expedia (NASDAQ:EXPE) Group Inc and Booking Holdings (NASDAQ:BKNG) Inc rose more than 2% each.
"Just because the variant is more vaccine resistant doesn't mean vaccines are now useless. That is building a more positive picture than what we were facing last Friday," said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda.
Pandemic winners, including Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX), Roku (NASDAQ:ROKU) Inc Zoom Video Communications (NASDAQ:ZM) were all trading lower.