People All Across The Globe Reporting Pent Up Demand for Travel
American Express’ (Amex) Global Travel Trends Report surveyed travelers from USA, Canada, UK, Mexico, Australia, India and Japan about their travel plans. The survey has brought to light some interesting observations.
The survey has revealed that travel is one of life’s big pleasures for a lot of people and these people are not willing to let go of this pleasure inspite of the pandemic fears. Many people are hoping that travel will resume in near future and they will be able to get back to their old traveling ways.
This hope of future travel is helping them to get through this period where travel is restricted and the world is filled with fear. Having a future trip planned gives many people something to look forward to. So there is a lot of pent up demand for travel which might explode like a volcano when normalcy starts returning.
This is actually great news for the travel and the hospitality sectors, as both these industries were severely hit during for most part of 2020 and up to now in 2021. The industry experts had gloomy predictions for the near future, so a lot of motivation is needed to inspire confidence. The Amex survey results come as a ray of fresh hope that the travel sector will pick up soon, which could result in boosting the hospitality sector in a major way!
More than 50% of those surveyed said that they miss traveling so much that they wouldn’t mind booking a future trip even if they have to cancel it later on due to any reason.
Another interesting thing to note is that the demand for luxury travel and off-season travel may see a significant rise. The reason is that people would want greater cleanliness and hygiene standards while traveling and while staying at hotels, even if they have to pay extra for it. Off-season travel may see a sharp rise as people may want to travel to less crowded destinations, so they may plan a trip when they expect lesser crowds!
This could mean that people may wish to travel to less popular tourist destinations and they may want to travel at other than peak season times. So the travel and hospitality industry may see customers throughout the year and for remote, diverse, lesser known places. Smart businessmen, foreseeing this trend, may start taking steps to capitalize on this as soon as possible.