You all know by now that I love a good travel predictions list, and November ‘tis the season for these.
This is on my mind because we just dropped the latest episode of Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data Podcast that I host with industry superstars Jan Freitag from CoStar and Isaac Collazo from STR. Their banter for the past few episodes has been the will-we-or-won’t-we debate over a recession in the U.S., and Isaac’s position always comes back to the fact that big-picture recession or not, travelers are traveling and that’s not slowing down.
His take is that the people filling your hotel rooms with such gusto and open wallets tend to be in the more stable income brackets who will likely stay in those stable income brackets even if the U.S. experiences a recession, because they tend to be more highly educated and still have those pandemic-era savings to spend on travel.
And I agree with his reasoning on this. The U.S. at least is in a pretty sweet spot heading into the home stretch of 2023 recession or not, because strong leisure demand and a good third quarter for group and business-transient demand recovery helped you all make hay while the sun shone. And signs point to that eager travel behavior continuing into next year.
So back to where I started, now that we’ve established that recession or not, travelers still gonna travel — those predictions lists.
This morning my friend-from-afar Emily Goldfischer shared the Skyscanner Travel Trends 2024 report and it’s a fun one that, despite the fluffy buzzwords, has some good meat on the bone.
(Quick sidebar: If you don’t follow Emily, please do. She is a gold mine of industry trends information and insights via her site Hertelier.)
The Skyscanner list has “gig-tripping” as its No. 1 travel trend next year, and it’s the first I’ve heard this term but it absolutely covers the phenomenon we saw this year of people making short-haul (and sometimes longer!) trips to see their favorite artists, a la Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. Judging by the number of people I know who saw the first round of both concerts and already have tickets for the second round, I believe in this trend.
Visit the link to see the full list of Skyscanner’s trends, but I want to highlight one more from the list, what they call “luxe for less,” or travelers seeking “luxury where they can, within budget.” The example here is that you know you want to visit a sunny beach destination, you know you can’t afford an over-water cabana in the Maldives, so you find a less-traveled-but-equally-beachy locale instead.
I would add to this one the tips I’ve seen all year on social media about finding lesser-known places in Europe to visit. In that case, it’s about avoiding crowds while getting the same great experience, but it fits.
Lots of interesting stuff to ponder on these lists as you prepare for 2024.
And back to the Tell Me More podcast: Isaac and Jan have established a big fan base already for their show and we’re opening up a future episode to listener questions. If you have a question you’d like them to address on the air, email it to me. Ask them anything about the data, and of course anything not about the data is fair game, too. Need a restaurant or concert recommendation? Want some deep thoughts on AI in the industry? Ask away.
Email me, or find me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
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