Washington, March 20 (US): US booking sites including Vrbo, Hopper and KAYAK are seeing a surge in demand for leisure travel in the spring and summer as COVID-19 restrictions ease and travelers seem to be ignoring the additional costs of plane tickets and road trips from higher fuel prices.
“We are seeing strong booking activity for spring break and a very strong start of summer,” said Jamie Lin, Vice President of Research at AirDNA, which tracks the daily performance of more than 10 million properties at vacation rental companies like Airbnb and Vrbo.
This week, both United Airline Holdings Inc and American Airlines Inc reported a strong rebound in travel demand after the sudden outage of the coronavirus variant, Omicron.
AirDNA data said the pace of bookings for travel in the Northern Hemisphere this spring is 49% higher than this time last year, and 26% higher than in 2019 before the pandemic.
“The rush to book summer vacation homes has picked up pace in 2022,” Frbow said.
The rental booking platform reports that the demand for real estate has already exceeded last summer by 15%.
“When reviewing the booking data, it was clear that Omicron was a greater concern for travelers about rising fuel costs,” said Dakota Smith, chief strategy officer at Hooper, a travel booking app.
The app, which is popular with younger travelers, has seen a 50% increase in travel bookings since the last quarter of 2021.
Airlines are counting on strong demand to deal with rising fuel costs. Some airlines intend to pass the majority of this increase on to customers.
“With gas prices at record levels, jet fuel prices may not be far off… This summer’s travel season could be exorbitant,” said Paul Jacobs, general manager and vice president of KAYAK North America.
Flight prices rose 17% last week compared to the same week in 2019, according to Kayak, Reuters reported.
Higher fuel costs will have less impact on domestic flights and short trips, although indications are that American travelers will continue to prefer those flights in the pandemic era.
Huber said US bookings to Europe have fallen from 21% of Huber’s international bookings to 15% since February 12, with international bookings shifting toward Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. According to Smith, these locations now account for 61% of Hopper’s international bookings. Europe accounted for nearly 30% of Hopper’s international bookings in 2019.
According to AirDNA, commercial travel and travel to urban locations have not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Investors will also get another perspective on the leisure travel recovery when Carnival Corp (CCL.N) reports earnings on Tuesday.
The average Carnivalon is expected to incur a loss of $1.21 per share while revenue rises to more than $2 billion, according to Refinitiv data.
FA