Domestic Trips Will Save The Travel Industry: Say Yes To Travel

I personally love studying numbers and trends. And right now with the travel industry being so bleak, it is a hard time. Which is why I’ve chosen to dive in deep into studying trends and looking at stats and facts. It’s in these figures that I really think we can have a better understanding of the future.

That being said, the two key components to travel recovery will be heavily reliant on “young” travelers (aka millennials and Gen Z) as well as domestic travel. Interestingly enough, the two do overlap, but they are significant enough that they need to be examined on their own.

So let’s go ahead and break down some interesting numbers shared this past week.

The Youth Will Lead the Travel Rebound

According to Trip.com, travelers born after 1990 accounted for more than half of the total bookings during the recent May Day break in China. Indicating that the industry as a whole should look towards millennials and Gen Z travelers to be the first to travel after the pandemic.

The Timeline for Air Travel

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) forecasts that domestic air travel will return to 2019 levels by 2022. International long-haul travel on the other hand is not expected to match 2019 traffic until 2024.

I found this really interesting:

Last Monday, Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson shared some interesting insights shared by travel analyst and executives—European Hotels might be among the last to recover. Understanding that domestic and drive-to destinations will rebound first, those destinations that rely heavily on air travel will simply not have the traffic. China and the U.S. will recover sooner as they have a stronger domestic traveler base than European countries. The exception being Germany. Germany only relies on 18% of it’s tourism to come from International Countries. And if we are to see similar rebounding patterns to what we saw with the recent Labor Day holiday in China, the strong domestic travel base is likely a benefit for German hotels, which are expected to begin reopening to tourists later this month.

46% of tourism to Paris and Istanbul, stems from long-haul travel, the highest percentage of any European cities in the Tourism Economics data. For Lisbon it is 44 %, Rome is 43%, and Barcelona and Madrid get 40% of their tourism from longer, international flights. On the other side of the spectrum, and why I brought up Germany, is that Berlin is the only German city came up in the top 15 European cities for international travel. Berlin gets only 21 % of it’s tourism from long-haul traffic.

That’s it’s for today’s dive into travel industry numbers. I hope you learned something new, or were inspired to think about the travel industry recovery in a different way.

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