Global travel demand driven by vaccine rollouts: Tripadvisor survey

Research into the latest travel trends shows that the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines is a big determining factor in how long tourists plan to stay and how much they will spend. A TTR Weekly report focuses on research carried out by Tripadvisor, the world’s largest travel platform. Travellers across 6 large international markets were surveyed, to determine the impact of vaccination on tourism demand.

The research shows up differences in behaviour between those who are vaccinated against Covid-19 versus those who are not. Vaccinated travellers are already planning and booking holidays, as well as planning longer stays and budgeting to spend more.

In countries with a successful vaccine rollout programme, such as the UK and the US, tourism is bouncing back. By contrast, in countries where vaccine rollouts are moving more slowly, and where new variants are taking hold, the recovery is much slower. The Tripadvisor survey shows that 32% of vaccinated travellers have booked a domestic trip, with 80% of them saying being vaccinated was a determining factor. In contrast, less than 19% of unvaccinated people have booking a domestic holiday, with nearly half of them saying they’re waiting until they’ve received at least 1 vaccine dose.

Domestic travel is still very much top of the agenda. The survey shows that the vast majority of Tripadvisor users are carrying out searches on domestic locations – 75% of those planning to travel this month, 67% of those holidaying in July, and 62% planning trips in August. Later in 2021, the searches widen to international locations and make up the majority of planned trips from November.

Cities are also the hot favourite in Tripadvisor searches at the moment. Nearly a third of vaccinated travellers say they feel safer about visiting a city destination having had at least 1 dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

SOURCE: TTR Weekly