Online travel sites like Priceline, Kayak and Booking.com rang out 2024 on a high note, according to quarterly earnings reported by parent company Booking Holdings on Thursday. The strong results followed better-than-expected readings from Expedia and Airbnb earlier this month.
Travel saw healthy growth last year, with airline and cruise bookings hitting new all-time highs, and industry groups expect bookings to push higher yet in 2025. Though the new administration has brought a bit of turbulence.
The days of post-pandemic “revenge travel,” when bookings were growing at double-digit rates, might be over. “But the ghost of revenge travel, the spirit of revenge travel, lives on,” said Seth Borko, director of research for travel news site Skift.
He said people seem to have come out of the pandemic with travel as a higher priority. A recent Skift global survey found consumers were most excited to spend discretionary income on travel.
“What we think we’re seeing, both short term and long term, is travel as an identity, right? And experiences as an identity,” he said.
But as we saw in Friday’s consumer sentiment survey, buyers might be feeling a bit unsettled. That could be affecting travel plans for May and June, said analyst Patrick Scholes at Truist Securities.
“The bookings are kind of mediocre. They’re not going down, but they’re not, you know, they’re not exactly on fire either,” he said.
Scholes said tariffs could have a direct effect on travel because they affect exchange rates. A stronger dollar would be good for U.S. travelers internationally. But foreign tourists’ money won’t go as far here.
“One thing that’s interesting we’re watching very closely is inbound Canadian to the United States,” he said.
Typically the U.S. gets its highest number of foreign tourists from Canada, followed by Mexico.
Flyers are also voicing concerns about safety, said Jay Sorensen, an airline consultant. There have been several high-profile air travel incidents in recent weeks.
“Of course, it’s still safe to fly. But then you add to it the whole disruption that the Trump administration is creating in terms of the FAA, so that begins to magnify itself a little bit in terms of perhaps a hesitation for some,” he said.
The new government recently cut hundreds of jobs at the Federal Aviation Administration, but stipulated that air traffic controllers and other safety personnel would not be affected.
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