The United States Travel and Tourism industry is in deep trouble. Brand USA has updated the US travel and tourism industry about the latest trends due to the COVID-19 outbreak. And although this data is about US travel industry, but by and large this pattern applies to all other countries as well. Travel industry is one of those sectors worldwide, which has been affected the most by the pandemic. And, nowhere the forecast seems brighter, nowhere.
Particularly for US, lot of things are happening also because of its handling of the crisis. More than 30 countries have banned US travelers from their visiting their lands. Brand USA says that international visits to the United States are expected to drop by 50 million and spending is forecast to fall 75% this year. Border closures, ongoing reluctance to travel internationally, and the residual effects of the global economic recession will weigh heavily on international markets over the next several years.
According to research by Oxford Economics it will take 5 years for the travel and tourism industry to go back to “normal.” Many say this “normal” may not be the same normal in 2019. So we are already looking towards a new normal! By the end, of 2023, international visits to the US will remain 7% below 2019 levels. The spending on international visitors in the US is expected to still be 17% below 2019 levels in 2023, despite strong growth beginning in 2021 after COVID-19.
Domestic travel spending will fully recover to 2019 levels in 2024, however, losses will accrue to $620 billion through 2023. International markets will represent more than one-third of all losses through the forecast horizon.
Also supporting this long-term outlook of Brand USA is a new survey from The Manifest which says that 67% of Americans are at least somewhat uncomfortable with flying in the coming days, limiting summer travel possibilities. The same percentage of people (67%) said they were uncomfortable with air travel in May and July 2020. So, the percentage of people willing to travel is not going up.
With concerns about air travel as daily new cases surge, 23% of people have fully canceled their 2020 travel plans. Another 32% people in the US are stopping additional travel planning while just 15% are continuing to plan. Only thing looking better is road travel as it has exceeded pre-pandemic levels by over the July 4 holiday. Road trips are now preferred more than long haul travel. This will be a trend, that we shall be noticing across the world in coming seasons.
Travel anxiety obviously has to do lot with the volume of COVID-19 cases in close proximity. Therefore, as and when the spread of disease is moving to new areas and earlier hotspots are recovering, so is anxiety travelling to other places. Travel anxiety has also to do a lot with the most vulnerable demographic groups.
It also seems that Americans are more fearful of international travel than the domestic travel, which in a sense is ironical because US alone has more than one-fourth of COVID-19 case load of the world. Travel Safety Barometer (Wave VI), which measures the impact of COVID-19 on traveler perceptions of safety, has said in a study that the number of respondents who plan to take a leisure trip within the next six months, which has held steady at 40% since early June.
While the travel industry still has a long road to recovery ahead, there are two areas where perceptions of safety are in fact rising. Americans’ confidence in the safety of domestic flights increased, as did positive perceptions of hotels, which may be due to the extensive measures hotels and airlines have taken to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission. Apparently, the current headlines may not be rattling American travelers, but this situation is fragile and positivity could quickly disappear if current COVID-19 hot spots can’t quickly flatten the curve or there are future outbreaks linked to leisure travel. Scenes of crowded beaches, parks, and restaurants from the US Independence Day holiday may have put a dent in the perceptions of how safe these activities are. The latest data also shows that business travel continues to suffer from poor perceptions of safety.