Pent-up travel demand is likely to be unleashed earlier in North America than in the United Kingdom or Europe, and in all cases it's expected to first materialize in more domestic trips than international, according to insights from the latest traveler sentiment survey by STR, CoStar Group’s hospitality analytics firm.
Factors and considerations driving travel planning also has shifted as a result of the pandemic, the survey shows. One such shift is the rise in importance of cancellation policies among prospective travelers.
Cancellation policies ranked third in factors for considering travel accommodations, with 29% of travelers surveyed listing it as a key consideration — up from just 12% who called it out in an August 2020 survey.
The survey, conducted with STR’s Tourism Consumer Insights department in February 2021, solicited responses from more than 1,300 travelers, primarily located in North America, the United Kingdom and Europe.
Chris Klauda, senior director of market insights at STR, and Sean Morgan, director of research in STR’s Tourism Consumer Insights department, shared findings from the survey during a presentation titled “Tourism After Lockdown” as part of the Hotel Data Conference: Global Edition.
“No matter how optimistic or pessimistic you are, no one can deny that COVID-19 has really upended our world and our industry,” Klauda said.“The question now is, what can we do about it? Is there anything that we can do to reduce these barriers?”
Those barriers include government restrictions and regulations, but also travelers’ sense of comfort and well-being.
“There’s not much we can do about that first barrier in terms of government restrictions. Fortunately, those are being lifted as we speak," Klauda said. "The second set of barriers, comfort and well-being, is really where the industry can do something by clearly and creatively communicating travelers will be safe and comfortable when traveling, and not overdoing it so as to alarm travelers.”
Already travelers are signaling increasing comfort with the prospect of traveling, particularly domestically.
Of the travelers surveyed, 43% said they are “more likely” to travel domestically post-pandemic and 44% are “more likely” to travel internationally, while 50% are “as likely” to travel domestically post-pandemic and 41% are “as likely” to travel internationally.
That propensity to travel is highest among the surveyed travelers in North America — 49% of whom said they are prepared to take an overnight leisure trip post-pandemic, while only 15% of them said they are comfortable traveling today.
In the U.K., the percentage of travelers who said they are prepared to take an overnight leisure trip post-pandemic was 30%; in Europe, that percentage was 32%.
“This is really a reflection of what’s happened over the last 12 months or so — this surge in the staycation. And I think that that has, in many ways, altered the future travel behavior and attitudes of consumers in the U.K.,” Morgan said.
“Being in U.K., we are an island nation. And I think that does have a big impact in terms of international travel being disproportionately reliant on air travel and we’ve seen earlier that negative perceptions around flying are continuing to influence travel decisions.”
Preferences for destinations and accommodation types have also shifted, according to the survey findings.
Of travelers surveyed, 34% were more likely to take a trip to a countryside destination for an outdoors getaway, while 17% were more likely to go to a beach or coastal destination, and 16% were more likely to choose a small-town getaway.
Self-catering accommodations and short-term rentals gained ground in this category, with 16% of travelers stating a preference for this type versus 11% who did in the August 2020 survey. Smaller hotels, with fewer than 50 rooms, also ranked as a preference among surveyed travelers, while the accommodation types receiving the most negative response included hostels, camping and larger hotels with more than 100 rooms.
“Overall, it’s a pretty negative picture. There is one standout performer or sector, and that is the short-term rentals and it will be interesting to see as hopefully … we move through this, out of this pandemic, how that sector continues to be perceived and how it changes,” Morgan said.
He added, however, that those negative perceptions of accommodation types are somewhat less negative than they were in the August survey.
“Ultimately, that implies improving sentiment. Overall, there is certainly some positivity on the horizon,” he said.