By Lorraine Ehrlichmann, Evgeni Kochman, Jürgen Schröder, and Nina Wittkamp
With the opening of borders and the relaxation of travel restrictions in most of Europe in mid-June, we are seeing an initial restart of the travel industry. Hotels are reopening, and airlines are resuming flights on a reduced but regular schedule. Majorca, one of the most popular destinations for German vacationers, was allowing a limited number of German tourists as a part of its trial reopening.
The restart of travel after the COVID-19 lockdown raises many questions:
What are the post-lockdown consumer trends shaping the industry?
What will the changes in consumer behavior entail for major tourism players and stakeholders?
What are the near-term and long-term business risks and opportunities for individual industry players?
Tourism has historically rebounded to its precrisis way of operating following an economic crisis. Given that the current economic crisis was precipitated by a public-health crisis, might we see changes to the industry that persist long into the future?
These myriad open questions reveal the intense uncertainty associated with both what post-COVID-19 vacation travel patterns will look like and how companies in the industry, such as public tourism authorities or accommodations and transportation providers, should respond to the changing tourism landscape.
Our already available reports bring together lessons learned from other countries, especially China, analyze scenarios for the recovery of US hotel occupancy, and together with IATA provide ways to track and understand demand recovery.
In this report, we draw upon the insights from our proprietary travel dashboard, developed in partnership with trivago. We identify and quantify key emerging travel trends, discuss their impact on vacation travel patterns, and provide guidance on how travel industry players can utilize data insights to manage the resulting situations. There is no doubt about ambiguity within the industry and the limited data transparency to understand demand development. At the same time, the travel industry needs to look beyond the challenge and see the opportunity.
Eight trends shaping the post-COVID-19 travel market
While there are several individual anecdotes and even more opinions about how the crisis has shaped the travel market, data and empirical evidence have been limited so far. That said, observations from recovering travel markets may demonstrate early patterns, giving travel players a head start. We chose Germany as a reference point due to its position as the largest European and third-largest global international travel market, and the fact that its metrics are commonly seen as leading the recovery curve.
Eight important—and, in part, mutually reinforcing—trends that have emerged during the COVID-19 crisis can be observed.
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