New Data Shows Signs of Recovery for Travel Industry

by Donald Wood
Last updated: 10:53 AM ET, Mon July 6, 2020

Travel has been devastated by the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, but new data shows signs of recovery in most sectors of the industry.

According to analytics platform Cardlytics, consumers have been spending more in recent weeks as states reopen, with travel agencies jumping from a 93-percent decline year-over-year in April to just a 68-percent drop in early June.

"As we know, COVID-19 has changed consumer behavior. Across the board, disruptors are rapidly gaining a foothold over their traditional counterparts," Cardlytics vice president Sasha Trifunac said in a statement. "We've seen the shift in spend toward e-commerce retailers, online grocery, third-party restaurant delivery and now, alternative lodging."

The airline industry was one of the sectors in travel hit the hardest, with a 93 percent year-over-year decline in the first week of April. Between June 11 and 17, aviation had climbed to just a 69-percent drop compared to 2019.

The hotel and resort industry was only down 40 percent compared to the same period in June 2019, which is a stark contrast to the 86-percent drop year-over-year recorded in April at the height of the viral pandemic.

As for the car rental industry, the service bottomed out at a decline of 73.8 percent in April, but has rebounded to around 40 percent since the end of May. On the other hand, the cruise industry has been down more than 80 percent since mid-March and remains there in June.

"By Memorial [Day] weekend, alternative lodging was already back to pre-COVID growth in spend and by mid-Jun had accelerated to +28 percent year-over-year," Trifunac said. "In comparison, traditional hotel brand remained down -64 percent year-over-year. Because alternative lodging is typically paid for in advance while traditional hotels are paid upon checkout, some of the differential is an early indicator of upcoming travel spend."

"However, the dramatic recovery of alternative lodging has far outpaced for many weeks the much slower recovery in traditional hotel spend and seems to indicate an accelerated adoption of vacation rental disruptors," Trifunac continued.

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