Travel Trends & Sentiment

Yes, high travel prices are having an impact although travel demand remains strong. Travelers still get their heart strings pulled by landscape and sunset images in travel advertising. As always, marketers would be wise to dig deeper into pyschographics to target their most fruitful audiences.

Travel Spending–People who describe themselves as having dominant personalities, as well as those who describe themselves as active & energetic, plan to spend more on travel than they did previously (45.4% vs. 36.2% among all travelers). Active energetic types also have the highest reported travel budgets for the year at $5,200 (vs. $3,900 for the average traveler). As you might expect, people who describe themselves as worriers are more sensitive to what they perceive as “expensive” travel prices right now, and plan to spend less on leisure travel than they previously did (23.8% vs. 18.5% for all travelers). In fact, over 40% of worriers say right now is a “bad” time to spend on travel.

Travel Planning and Media Consumption–Those that identify as creative are the likeliest to be talking to friends and relatives about travel right now (40.1%). These creative types are also more apt to plan a week-long vacation in under 2 months; in contrast, self-described worriers need an additional week on average compared to other travelers (11 weeks vs. 10 weeks for other travelers). Adventurous types, as well as the active energetics are those travelers most likely to be glued to their phones looking at travel information (76% vs 63.1% for the average traveler). Travelers looking for a new romantic partner are more likely than others to use digital influencers to plan travel (34.0% vs. 19.8%) and more likely to use online video resources for trip planning (48.4% vs. 33.1%). These romance-seekers prefer to visit new places over ones they have been to before and, perhaps unsurprisingly, are less likely to want to see beautiful scenery in travel ads and more likely to want to see nightlife. Those that identify as calm, as well as those that describe themselves as sensitive, are both more likely to be found using online resources rather than offline. In fact, it’s the adventurous and dominant types who use more resources to plan travel–online and offline–overall. When it comes to TikTok versus Instagram Reels, it’s the worriers who have a TikTok preference (32.0% picked TikTok over Instagram Reels when presented the choice; 28.0% picked Instagram Reels and the rest said neither). Meanwhile, self-described calm travelers prefer Instagram Reels (31.8% picked Instagram Reels over TikTok, 24.7% picked TikTok and the rest said neither).

Rising Travel Costs & Inflation

With the peak summer travel season begun, more Americans are agreeing it’s a good time to spend money on travel (33.4%). Additionally, 61.7% percent say that leisure travel will be a high spending priority – the highest level it’s been since July 2021.

Yet inflation and prices are indeed having an impact. The percent of American travelers saying that if gas prices don’t come down, they will take fewer road trips this summer (61.1%) and/or stay closer to home (63.0%) both increased 3 percentage points. High travel prices as an impediment to travel also climbed 3-points in the last month to 41.8%.

30.1% say they have cancelled a trip they had planned or considered because of high prices. When asked to rate how much a deterrent specific travel costs are, the two most commonly seen as “deal breakers” are gas (22.9%) and airfare (11.8%)

Feelings about COVID

Americans are splintering again on Covid. Although a larger proportion of Americans feel optimistic about how the Covid situation will progress in the next month (32.3%), a growing proportion now feel it will worsen (up to 25.3% from 21.5% last month). More also feel that the virus is impacting their ability to have meaningful travel experiences (up 5-points in the last month to 38.2%). In addition, amongst those who have taken an overnight trip in the last 3 months, 27.3% said they had more than moderate anxiety on their most recent trip (up over 8-points in the last month). Despite relaxed mask requirements on commercial aircrafts, a majority of travelers (59.3%) would still prefer that all passengers wear masks while onboard the plane. In fact, those preferring that masks continue to be work surpasses the proportion of those who would not prefer this by a ratio of nearly three-to-one. Nevertheless, 34 percent of travelers say relaxed masking requirements increases their interest in traveling by air, compared to about 25 percent who disagree with this sentiment.

Source: Destination Analysts Update on American Travel Trends & Sentiment-Week of June 6th, 2022