The Travel Vertical

Weekly stories curated exclusively for digital tourism marketers

Memorial Day 2022 Forecasts and Top Destinations

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Memorial Day forecasts point to a busy season ahead at America’s official start of summer.

Thanks to Leroy Bridges, Senior Industry Specialist – Tourism, for sharing this update from ADARA. He points out some data standouts:


– Midwest and Northeast cities are BACK! Check out those top 10 destinations by volume. Looked much different last year.

– A Novice traveler (the bulk of American travelers) uptick over the last three quarters continues to show people are more and more comfortable traveling.

Officials from AAA Travel expect 39.2 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more from home this Memorial Day weekend between May 26-30.

The estimate is an 8.3% increase over last year, with air travel up 25% higher. Traffic totals are expected to be only slightly lower than pre-pandemic levels.

“Memorial Day is always a good predictor of what’s to come for summer travel,” AAA Travel senior vice president Paula Twidale said. “Based on our projections, summer travel isn’t just heating up, it will be on fire. People are overdue for a vacation and they are looking to catch up on some much-needed R&R in the coming months.”

Despite gas prices reaching historical totals, AAA Travel indicates 34.9 million Americans plan to travel by car, a jump of 4.6% over 2021.

Big Brands Talk: Airbnb, United Airlines, Marriott Put Muscle Behind Recovery

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San Francisco International Airport

“Our biggest concern right now is selling out for the summer. Across all U.S. airlines, we don’t want to run out of supply this summer.” — Andrew Nocella, Chief Commercial Officer, United Airlines

Airbnb

ICYMI: A fascinating new change of approach around search was announced by Airbnb. CEO Brian Chesky calls this “the biggest change to Airbnb in a decade.”

Observers wonder, could this be start of more innovation around travel search?

Listings are being re-organized from destinations into 50+ categories with more to come. For example, “camping,” or “countryside,” or “castles.” How do you categorize the one-offs like a yellow submarine in the middle of the forest in New Zealand? That’s in a category called “OMG!”

This means that Airbnb is betting big on consumers need to curate. If you want to watch and listen to Chesky explain it in a 6-min. video, go to the home page at AIrbnb.com and click on the pop-up banner, “Play the film.”

Also, Airbnb has also launched what it calls “Split Stays,” allowing people to book two vicinity properties back-to-back. He’ll wrap it up with an Airbnb insurance cover pitch.

United Airlines

Rolling out their biggest brand campaign in nearly a decade, United Airlines touts “Good Leads the Way” via creative partner 72andSunny. In a post-pandemic push, the copy touches on diversity, equity, and inclusion, sustainability efforts, vaccine requirements during the pandemic and customer service and passenger experience. Thirty-two employees are in the video.

Campaign collateral will appear on television and streaming platforms, in airports, aboard aircraft, on social media, and key OOH locations.

Earlier this week, United Airlines Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella cited “strongest environment we’ve ever seen” at an investors’ conference.

https://youtu.be/lUQ5_OZC9mk

Marriott International

JW Marriott Hotel Warner Center Woodland Hills, Los Angeles

As Apple and Google move to clamp down on first-party data, look what Marriott International is doing.

This is the world’s most powerful hotel brand with nearly 1.5 million rooms at about 8,000 properties in 139 countries (with more in the pipeline). The Wall Street Journal reports, “Marriott Rolls Out Media Network That Lets Brands Reach Travelers on Its Apps and TV Screens.” This is the first global travel media network (won’t be the last one) aimed at customers and loyalty reward members, using anonymized customer data (Marriott says no names and addresses) to help other brands reach Marriott guests (via digital ads and in-room TV).

Related: Experts Say Summer Travel Demand Is Going to Be ‘Gangbusters’

Travel Sentiment

According to the latest survey on American travel sentiment conducted by Longwoods International, the price of gas and plane tickets is now impacting travel more than Covid-19 for trip planning over the next six months. However, for those heading out anyway (only 6% say they’ve actually cancelled a trip), a strong summer travel season indicator is that pent-up demand remains high at 89% of American travelers with plans to go in next six months.

‘It Pays to Meet in Colorado’ — Destination Colorado Meetings Goes All In

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The state’s incentive provides pre-approved applicants with a 10% rebate up to $100,000 against the eligible costs* of hosting meetings and events that take place before June 30, 2024. The copy reads:

“It’s an 8-step process to claim this rebate for your organization. Don’t worry, we’ll walk you through this process!

First, a quick intro. The Colorado Tourism Office is providing this great incentive to promote meetings in Colorado to give folks a taste of this Rocky Mountain paradise. Come for the meetings, stay for recreation and scenery.

With $10 million up for grabs, applicants are approved on a first-come basis so don’t delay!”

An event is eligible for a rebate only once per year. Eligible events include but are not limited to business meetings, conferences, conventions, exhibitions, trade shows, consumer shows, festivals, concert series, and weddings. The event needs to:

  • have applicant be the primary organizer, host or planner
  • be hosted in Colorado
  • take place before June 30, 2024
  • be a new event contracted on or after April 6, 2021
    • or a previously booked or recurring event at risk of being canceled, postponed, or relocated outside of Colorado without support
  • generate at least 25 room nights
  • have total eligible hard costs of at least $35,000
  • meet any additional criteria established by the CTO”

Click for the full checklist or watch it explained in a video:

ALSO…

Colorado Tourism Office also launched a “Reimagine Destinations Program” to assist tourism destinations’ projects, seeking to partner with them by serving as their extended strategy and implementation team. The objective is to foster the long-term resilience of the Colorado tourism industry.

Colorado Recovery Assistance For Tourism (CRAFT) is funded by a $2.4 million CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration.

The copy reads:

Program objectives include:

  • enhanced collaboration between state and local tourism leaders
  • shared alignment on priorities to advance tourism
  • implementation of one or more innovative tourism projects 

Participating destination organizations will receive: 

  • a destination assessment
  • a full-day community visioning and action planning workshop
  • 100 hours of free consulting to advance priority projects
  • $20,000 of direct marketing support from the Colorado Tourism Office 

The program is being managed by Andrew Grossman, Director of Destination Development, Office of Economic Development & International Trade

Roundup: Experts Say Summer Travel Demand is Going to Be ‘Gangbusters’

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Following last week’s earnings calls, what Marriott and Hilton are saying, plus reports on airline throughout from TSA, road trips from Arrivalist, recovery insights from U.S. Travel Association via Tourism Economics, and American traveler sentiment—including concerns about the pandemic, gas prices, and inflation—from Destination Analysts.

“We think the summer is going to be gangbusters for travel demand,” said Marriott CEO Tony Capuano in a CNBC interview. “We see extraordinarily strong leisure demand…but I think what gives us continued optimism is the recovery we’re seeing in the other two segments, in groups certainly but also in business transient.”

“We think this summer is going to be—after setting records in our business for travel demand and revenue last summer—we think this summer is going to be another sort of all-time record,” Hilton Worldwide CFO Kevin Jacobs said last week. Business travel will fully recover “by the end of the year,” he added in an interview with Yahoo Finance.

Have you seen the TSA throughput numbers? (Not to mention airfares!) In both March and April, the Transportation Security Administration screened an average of more than two million travelers at U.S. airport security checkpoints every day. These figures are only slightly below 2019.

But there are issues. Airline Weekly reports, “The recovery was looking good until a laundry list of non-pandemic issues got in the way. With results in from almost every major U.S. airline, the outlook is both bright and dim: Profits are set to return at most in the second quarter and continue through the rest of the year, but operations will be hamstrung by everything from staffing to rocket launches at Cape Canaveral. And the staffing concerns are not just with pilots. They range from crew training backlogs to competition for entry-level employees, and even air traffic controllers.”

Over Easter, U.S. travelers hit the road in numbers not seen in four years, according to Arrivalist. Last week, they reported good news, “U.S. overnight road trips jumped up 13.7% from the same week in 2019, good enough to push overnight trending up 6.7% from the 2019 and up 11% from this time last year.”

About six in 10 Americans are planning at least one summer trip. Despite higher gas prices, of those planning vacations, 35% expect to travel more this summer than last, according to the monthly Travel Recovery Insights Dashboard from U.S. Travel Association. However, nearly two-thirds of American travelers (63%) say rising gas prices will impact their decision to travel in the next six months. Data from 20+ partners is compiled by Tourism Economics.

What do American travelers think about inflation, gas prices, COVID, and going back to the office? Here’s a comprehensive update for May 2022 from Destination Analysts.

The Impact of Inflation, Gas Prices & Other Economic Factors on Travel

  • Many Americans seem to feel economic headwinds are inevitable. Right now, 59.0% of American travelers believe it is likely an economic recession will begin in the U.S. this year. Just 27.8% believe inflation will weaken this year and just 24.2% believe the U.S. will experience strong economic growth.
  • Inflation in consumer prices has led 23.2% of American travelers to cancel an upcoming trip, while 38.3% of American travelers agree that high prices have kept them from traveling in the past month.
  • If gasoline prices don’t come down, 58.0% of American travelers predict they will be taking fewer road trips this Spring and Summer, and 60.4% predict they will be staying closer to home on their road trips.
  • Fewer American travelers are now saying that luxury travel experiences are important to their leisure trips (35.6% down from 40.0% last month). While the average reported leisure travel budget for the next 12 months is at $3,857, this is still down from February, when it was at $4,283.
  • Americans feeling that the present is a good time to spend on travel is at 31.8%, a 10-point decline since the start of the year.
  • Nevertheless, Americans are still prioritizing their leisure travel. Nearly 90% have trips planned—3.0 on average. And despite the economic concerns, 60.6% continue to say their leisure travel is a high priority in their budget for the next 3 months. Americans recorded another record level of excitement about their leisure travel, as well. Over 80% did some trip dreaming and planning just in the last week alone.
  • While down slightly from the start of the year, many Americans also continue to feel optimistic about their financial future. 42.4% believe they will be better off financially next year compared to now.

Expectations for the Pandemic

  • More than half of American travelers—and over 60% of those Millennial or Gen Z age—feel largely that there is normalcy, a 20+ point climb from the start of the year.
  • Now only one-third of American travelers feel COVID will have a meaningful impact on their travel experiences, and fewer than one-in-five recent travelers felt pandemic anxiety on their last trip.
  • Interestingly, after more than two years of COVID-19, American travelers do reveal a wariness about the pandemic’s future. Over 45% of American travelers feel it’s likely that a dangerous new variant of COVID-19 will emerge in the U.S. in the remainder of this year. In addition, those that feel the pandemic situation will get worse in the next month has more than doubled over the last several weeks—to 21.5% from 8.7%. However, this wariness has not currently impacted their excitement for travel nor their confidence in their ability to travel safely.

The State of Business Travel

  • Nearly two-thirds of of American travelers feel it’s likely companies will require more employees to return to the office in the remainder of the year. However, only 36.5% of American travelers expect that business travel will return to pre-pandemic levels in 2022, as 64.7% believe that virtual meetings will continue to replace many in-person meetings.
  • Business travelers are certainly on the road, though. Over half of business travelers will take a business trip in the next 3 months—1.3 of these trips on average.

Jobs Matter: Tourism Is the Comeback Kid (We Hope)

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The latest Economic Impact Report (EIR) from World Travel & Tourism Council reveals the Travel & Tourism sector is expected to create nearly 126 million new jobs within the next decade. The bullish forecast from WTTC also shows the sector will be a driving force of the global economic recovery, creating one in three of all new jobs.

Let’s hope they’re right.

The EIR report shows Travel & Tourism’s GDP is forecasted to grow at an average rate of 5.8% annually between 2022-2032, outstripping the 2.7% growth rate for global economy, to reach $14.6 trillion (11.3% of the total global economy). The report also shows global Travel & Tourism GDP could reach pre-pandemic levels by 2023 — just 0.1% below 2019 levels. The sector’s contribution to GDP is expected to grow a massive 43.7% to almost $8.4 trillion by the end of 2022, amounting to 8.5% of the total global economic GDP, or 13.3% behind 2019 levels.

A report by the American Hotel & Lodging Association and Kalibri Labs found that hotel business travel revenue is expected to be 55% lower in the New York City market this year than in 2019. Read more about recovery in other U.S. cities in the New York Post.

Colorado Tourism Tallies the Cost of Lost Business

We’re digging out of a big hole.

Pikes Peak Mountains in Colorado Springs

The coronavirus pandemic cost Colorado’s tourism industry nearly $9 billion in 2020. The latest figures from the Colorado Tourism Office show travel spending dropping to $15.4 billion in 2020, down from a record $24.2 billion in 2019. That’s the lowest tally of visitor spending since the depth of the recession in 2011. (source: The Colorado Sun)

According to two annual state-commissioned reports and the annual report by travel research firm Dean Runyan Associates:

  • 31,700 jobs lost, to 149,500 traveler-dependent jobs in 2020 from 181,200 in 2019 
  • 9.7% decline in earnings by travel-industry workers to $6.7 billion in 2020 from $7.4 billion in 2019 
  • 31.3% drop in traveler-generated tax revenue, to $1 billion in 2020 from $1.5 billion in 2019, which amounts to $439 million in state taxes and $588 million in local taxes
  • 52.3% drop in domestic flights into Colorado, to 5.5 million in 2020 from 11.5 million in 2019 
  • 73% decline in international travel, to 280,000 in 2020 from more than 1 million in 2019
  • Spending on hotels, motels and inns dropped 36% to $3.3 billion in 2020 from $5.2 billion in 2019
  • Restaurants and bars saw a 24% decline in spending
  • Denver took the hardest hit in 2020, with a 56% decline in traveler spending. 

Staff

Laurie Jo Miller Farr, Editor
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