The latest installment of Longwoods International's ongoing American Travel Sentiment Study indicates that record-high gas prices and soaring airfare costs have overtaken pandemic-related concerns for consumers as the summer travel season approaches.
According to the study, one-third of travelers said that gas prices will greatly affect their travel plans over the next six months, while one-quarter reported that the soaring price of plane tickets will impact them in a similar way.
Only 19 percent of respondents said the COVID-19 pandemic now stands to greatly influence their travel decisions for the same timeframe.
"Inflation, high gas prices, and generally rising costs are front of mind for travelers this summer season," remarked Amir Eylon, President and CEO of Longwoods International. "However, competing with these concerns is the strong pent-up demand for post-pandemic travel, so the impact of prices may be somewhat muted by that surge in demand."
Nine out of ten U.S. travelers now report that they're planning on taking trips within the next six months, representing a complete rebound to trip-planning recorded prior to the start of the pandemic.
And, the 19 percent of survey participants who indicated that COVID-19 will heavily impact their travel plans for the next six months actually represents the smallest portion of respondents who've said the same since March 2020.
Longwoods began tracking travel consumer sentiment in the U.S. at the start of the pandemic and has continued to release updated survey findings and analyses on a bi-weekly basis.
The full results of its Wave 61 Travel Sentiment Study are available for download here.
Supported by Miles Partnership, the survey was fielded on May 11, 2022, using a randomly-selected national sample of 1,000 adult American consumers, ages 18 and over. Quotas for age, gender and region were applied to match U.S. Census targets, rendering the results representative of the U.S. population as a whole.
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