After a year at home, Americans are ready to get out and travel, and professionals are expecting a surge in demand starting this summer and stretching into the next few years. We talked to several local travel industry experts about how people are traveling now and what they predict in the future.
Travelers want flexibility, so they're taking road trips and making plans last minute.
"We've seen a couple of trends emerge over last year and into this year, one of the biggest ones being that travelers are taking a wait-and-see approach," says Megan Cooper, Tennessee public and government relations consultant for AAA.
The rapidly changing restrictions and stay-at-home orders we saw last year left travelers unsure if they would be able to take planned vacations, she explains.
"What we found was that a lot of travelers were waiting almost last minute to travel, and when they were traveling, more often than not they were taking a road trip," Cooper says. "With that, they have a lot more control," she adds, listing points of concern like social distance and sanitizing. "They can make those on-the-go decisions, as opposed to traveling on a commercial airline or some sort of mass transit where they're not able to make those decisions."
Martha King of King and Whitson Travel, a luxury agency that specializes in high-profile, high-security travel - co-owner Susan Whitson was former White House press secretary to First Lady Laura Bush - says her clients have also been making last-minute plans, though that's starting to shift. Africa is one of the most popular destinations for her clients, and a lot of the country's lodges are very small and booking quickly.
"That's what we're trying to get across to clients, that you do need to start planning now, especially for 2022. This trickle we see now is about to become a surge," she says.
Comfort levels remain relatively low, and most travelers are drawn to beach and outdoor destinations over cities.
Cooper says about half of respondents in a survey conducted by AAA in the first quarter of 2021 plan on taking a spring break trip this year.
"It's really right down the middle on comfort level and how people are planning to travel," she says.
Most say the factors affecting their comfort level in traveling are the increasing availability of the COVID-19 vaccine and the decreasing number of new cases, according to AAA survey results at the end of last year and the first quarter of 2021.
Most people planning trips for spring are choosing outdoor destinations, such as beaches and state and national parks, with space to maintain distance between themselves and people outside their household, Cooper says. Destinations in Florida and the Carolinas are popular with people in this area because they are an ideal distance for road tripping, she adds.
Both King and Cindy Bandstra, senior vacation expert at the local Expedia Cruises travel agency, say that right now, their clients are mostly traveling domestically or to Mexico or the Caribbean, which, unlike other international destinations, did not close their borders to American travelers and offer white sandy beaches.
Vacation rentals all over the U.S., particularly beach destinations, are booking quickly for the summer months, Bandstra says. A client recently asked her to book a vacation rental for a summer trip, and the client was surprised to learn that most rentals in the areas she selected - Dauphin Island, Mexico Beach, Hilton Head and St. Augustine - were already booked.
With many people deciding to stay home or cancel planned trips in 2020 and into 2021, a surge of pent-up demand is expected later this year as well as in 2022 and 2023.
"Staying at home and not going anywhere can definitely cause some pent-up demand for travel," Cooper says.
One in five of AAA's survey respondents said they are more comfortable traveling now, and 27% of those who said they are more comfortable credit quarantine fatigue for part of that. Mask use, updated cleaning policies, more knowledge about how the disease spreads and greater confidence in medical treatment are also factors in people's growing comfort in resuming travel, she says.
"The vaccine is giving people hope," says King. "It's like having a drink of water after being in the COVID desert for so long, and people are just itching to go.
"We know international leisure travel will return; it will be more robust than ever," she adds.
She predicts some type of vaccine requirements for travelers in the near future. Bandstra says some travel industry employers are implementing vaccine requirements for staff, such as cruise line operator Royal Caribbean.
The cruise industry - which went from a record number of sailings in January 2020 to a $40 billion loss in global fleet value by November - is prepping for a comeback, with cruise lines planning to start sailing out of U.S. ports in May and European ports beginning in June. Holcomb says about 70% of people who booked 2020 cruises through the agency chose to change it to a credit for a later trip rather than get a refund. Many of those credits expire in 2022, so cruises scheduled for 2021 are booking quickly.
"You've got the nervous Nellies, but for the most part they're ready to go," she says of her cruise travelers. "Cruise lines are really going above and beyond to make sure they're safe." For example, there will be universal COVID-19 testing for ships worldwide carrying 250 or more passengers. Bandstra says there will also be changes in the way cruises typically operate, such as staff serving food cafeteria-style rather than guests helping themselves to food at buffets.
Bandstra, local Expedia Cruises franchise owner Lynn Holcomb and other industry professionals predict cruising won't return to pre-pandemic levels until 2023. But when it does return, demand is expected to be huge.
"They're saying travel is going to come back like gangbusters," Holcomb says of travel in general.
Changing priorities are ushering in new travel trends.
King predicts a shift in mindset in terms of priorities and the way people want to travel. Partly as a result of everyone having ample time over the past year to think about what is important, she sees a likely shift in priorities from material possessions to experiences.
When people resume international travel, she expects less of a focus on running from country to country to check off all the boxes or get the next shot for Instagram. Since King has always focused on more immersive travel experiences for her clients, this is a welcome shift.
"Now, clients are wanting to make up for lost time and lost canceled vacations with longer, more immersive trips," she says, adding that people are also taking advantage of record-low pricing.
The desire to stay in one place for a longer period of time is partially because it mitigates risk associated with the virus. "That's giving people that peace of mind that they're not really exposing themselves as much as if they were hopping from place to place," King says.
Governments in countries such as Bermuda and Barbados are relaxing visa requirements, giving people the opportunity to stay longer.
Flexibility in work and school schedules is another reason travel habits are changing. Some people choose to stay in a villa for two to three months, as they have the option to work from anywhere that has good Wi-Fi.
"With great disruption comes great innovation, and so we're working really hard with our partners and suppliers all around the world and making sure we've got our thumb on the pulse of the experiences that our clients really want," King says.
She sees clients preferring country over city destinations, like the Cotswolds in England instead of London, or the Tuscany region of Italy as opposed to Rome.
King is also seeing even more interest in multigenerational trips, which were already popular among her clients.
"I think the power of travel pre-COVID, post-COVID is the same: It connects, and it brings us closer together. That connection is truly needed now more than ever," she says.