We are busting at the seams when it comes to desire for travel. More than a year of quarantining has run thin on nerves and people are ready to go somewhere, anywhere, 88% of them thinking of driving and 64% flying, according to a Travel Technology survey. 74% want to go to a theme park or national park.
The Orlando International Airport is busy, says Daniel McCarthy, editor of Travel Market Report. About a million people are moving through TSA checkpoints at the nation’s airports; during the lowest part of the pandemic that number was around 80,000. You would expect the numbers to be music to the ears of airline executives, but it’s not.“As we see leisure travel pick up, and consumers look to get on the road, business travel is still lagging far behind, and that’s not great news for the airlines. One estimate is that business travel might take up to five years to fully recover,” McCarthy tells KTRH News. 75% of the airline industry’s profit comes from business travel, even though it’s only a fraction of their business. The airfares are higher.
Cruise ships are still tied up at American ports, including Galveston, by mandate of CDC, but there are a lot of people wanting to get on big boats. Europe, which has had successive waves of the pandemic, has reopened their cruise industry, as have cruise lines in Asia and the Caribbean. “The cruises that have restarted in the Mediterranean haven’t had a lot of incidences, and they’ve been able to sail safely. A lot of the cruise lines expect to take those lessons over to the US when they’re allowed to,” McCarthy says.
76% of consumers say when they are fully vaccinated – they intend to take off, by whatever means they prefer.
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