Travel Will Fully Recover But Barriers Must Be Removed To Speed Recovery
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Colleen Gallagher
315.447.2331
July 14, 2021 (Washington, DC) – Looking ahead, roughly half of both leisure (53%) and business (48%) travelers expect to travel as much as they did before the pandemic, according to the latest monthly Traveler Confidence Index developed by Travel Again. On the leisure side, 15% expect to travel less than they did previously, balanced out by 15% that expect to travel more. Business travelers have a more pronounced gap with 26% expecting to travel less post-pandemic and only 11% expecting to travel more. Based on business travelers' willingness to travel, this is likely influenced more by travel budget cuts, not a lack of desire for business travel to resume.
“Overall traveler sentiment around future travel expectations once the pandemic is behind us paints an optimistic picture for the industry,” said Travel Again Co-Founder Mike McCormick. “Our survey numbers provide a positive early indicator for leisure travel suggesting that there will not be a significant long term reduction in the size of the travel market. As for business travel, Bill Gates and others have given doomsday predictions of permanent massive drops in business travel, but the numbers show a much stronger recovery ahead.”
“However, our collective ability to remove barriers will determine the speed at which the recovery takes place,” McCormick added. Barriers include onerous restrictions put in place by organizations during the pandemic around business travel booking and approvals as well as the lack of consistent, universal guidelines for digital tools that could provide efficiencies for front line workers - facilitating smoother travel in general.
The June survey also revealed that travelers are taking significantly more trips with 30% of leisure travelers and 22% of business travelers having taken 2+ trips since March 2020, compared to just 14% and 10% last month, respectively.
Additional Key Findings
After May's Confidence Index saw its largest monthly jump on the business traveler side since its launch, it varied only slightly in June for all travelers. The confidence index for leisure travelers continued to inch upward this month, from 3.68 to 3.77, with a slight decrease for business travelers from 3.77 to 3.66.
Leisure travelers are significantly more willing to travel now than any previous time during the pandemic with 87% willing to travel domestically over the next six months compared to 82% last month and 62% willing to travel internationally, up from 51%.
Frequent cleaning, vaccinations for travel providers and vaccinations for yourself were among the most important confidence building elements for both business and leisure travelers.
Traveler Confidence Index: After May's Confidence Index saw its largest monthly jump on the business traveler side since its launch, it varied only slightly in June for all travelers. The confidence index for leisure travelers continued to inch upward this month, from 3.68 to 3.77, with a slight decrease for business travelers from 3.77 to 3.66.
Travel Again has developed the Traveler Confidence Index assessing confidence levels in both the business and leisure traveler to guide the prioritization of future travel industry initiatives by measuring the impact on traveler confidence. This ninth edition focuses on U.S. travelers and we will continue reporting out on the index monthly, and will ultimately expand to include other countries as well.
About Travel Again: Travel Again unites the global travel industry to restore consumer and corporate confidence in traveling and to encourage responsible government policy. Visit travelagainproject.org for more information. Join Travel Again and support the global recovery of the travel industry. Follow Travel Again on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.