In 2020 COVID swept around the world shutting down economies, running people into their homes, and shutting down the travel industry. Sure, planes were still in the air, but the options for travel were few and far between. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, air travel in April 2020 saw a 96% drop from a year earlier. While air travel has rebounded since then, that bounce has been minimal. So, what will travel look like in 5 years? This is dateline 2025…
I flew in 2020. Once. I did take several road trips via highway, but even those trips weren’t exactly cross-country adventures. We drove to Park City Utah. A Lot. And we went to Phoenix Arizona. There was a day trip to San Luis Obispo to rescue our son’s stuff from a dorm room abandoned in March. A day trip to Orange County allowed us our one and only day on the water as we went whale watching with Captain Dave’s Dolphin Safari. Finally, in September, we traded in some Southwest Airlines flight credits and snuck away for a week at Walt Disney World. That was it.
Compare that to the year prior where I circumnavigated Iceland with Adventure Canada, I flew to Sydney Australia for some time with friends, we spent 10 days at Walt Disney World with our college boys, we flew to Nashville to watch our younger son perform in a national band competition, and I went on more business trips than I can remember. In 2019 I logged close to a million flight miles. In 2020 I logged 7,000. One round-trip from California to Florida.
I look at my past travel routines and imagine what the future will look like. Will I once again be able to wing my way around the world? Or will travel become more laborious? Will fewer flights lead to fewer trips? Will cruising return with a vengeance or a whisper? What will travel look like in 2025?
For every industry expert who says 2021 will see a pent-up demand for travel translate into record bookings, there is another expert going on record saying travel will take years to bounce back to its pre-COVID levels. Who is more likely to be correct? The answer depends on several complete unknowns.
- Vaccine access and requirements – will we need a vaccination to board a plane or cruise ship? It is looking increasingly likely that is going to be a short-term way of managing virus propagation. That, of course, means we need access to the vaccination. As of January 2021, in the US vaccine access is highly restricted. So to get the public flying again, the travel industry might need to apply pressure to increase access to anyone.
- Business travel – while Thanksgiving and Christmas are the busiest travel times for tourists, the vast majority of revenue in hotels, airlines, and car rentals comes from business travellers. A year of COVID-forced teleconferencing has taught companies they no longer need to fly employees around the world to handle most business transactions. Will all business travel cease to exist? Unlikely. But business travellers will likely see their transit times drastically reduced, at least for the next few years.
- Conference Travel – This is another industry that has been shuttered during COVID. What will it look like once it returns? There is a need for industries to market their programs and content in the conference environment, but look at the Sundance Institute and the Travel and Adventure Show Series. Both are examples of large-scale events that have found a way to proceed with content delivery in a virtual setting. Will this replace in-person events? Not likely. But it will certainly change the way content is delivered and consumed, thus shifting the focus away from the “one big event” for the year to several virtual events with some smaller in-person events.
- Finances – possibly the biggest unknown in this is the state of personal finance of the travelling public. And for some, will the fear of another COVID-type shutdown cause people to be more cautious with their dollars?
These are just a couple of examples. As we move into 2021, it will be interesting to see what aspects of the travel industry regain some of their footing.
I do think we will see a slow return to the numbers of travellers exploring the planet in 2019, but it will take time. Wary cruisers will keep ships at dock while people carefully analyze how and where they spend their vacation dollars. Once popular destinations will continue to have travel restrictions into late 2021. And flight demand will likely stay low. The only recent experience the travel industry has with a major global disruption was 9-11. It took the travel industry 6 years to recover from the terrorist attacks. If I were a betting person, it will take much longer for the industry to recover from this global event. It will be interesting to see what the travel world looks like in the next 5 years.