How US Travel Is Rebounding From Covid-19
2020 has shown to be a tough year on the US travel industry with borders closing, public transit coming to a screeching halt, and people transitioning to a work from home setup.
It was about 1 year ago when the scale and uncertainty of Covid-19 brought the stock market into free fall for a long year of hyper news sensitivity and a debilitating effect on the US economy.
It took a while before the US implemented measures to limit the spread of Covid-19 and introduce policies for businesses to be able to serve customers to prevent bankruptcy. This added the ability for more takeout and delivery, sidewalk terraces for people to sit outside where allowed, and it also gave a huge boost to teleconference and telemedicine solutions for work and medical needs as people adjusted to a “new normal”.
The chart below gives a good overview of how travel was impacted in relation to the US. It’s clear that travel from neighboring countries had the largest decline due to borders closing, followed by airport related services, public transit, and car sales.
Of course not all of this traffic was caused by people not being able to travel for work or leisure. In the past 5 years the percentage of Americans working remote has increased by 44%, signaling a trend only accelerated by Covid-19. Overall, 66% of working Americans work remote full-time. Some of the benefits mentioned for remote work are flexible schedules, better work life balance, and cost savings for the office commute, etc.
Looking ahead
Looking at the travel data from US Travel for May we can conclude travel is rebounding in the US with a slower curve internationally based on the following data snippets:
- $73.9 billion travel spending in April 2021 (24% drop compared to April 2019)
- 9/10 American travelers have plans to travel in the next six months (new high)
- More employees show willingness to travel for business (75% vs 65% in April 2021)
- Overseas travel to the U.S. remained 87% below pre-pandemic levels in April 2021 (no real improvement)
