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Booking Holdings ( Kayak, OpenTable, Agoda, Priceline, etc ) recently had their latest earnings call, and amidst announcing an 84% decline in earnings YoY, Glenn Fogel, Booking CEO, also made a prognostication on the travel industry as a whole. He forecasted that travel is unlikely to bounce back until after a vaccine. Of course, just because there is a vaccine doesn’t mean you’ll actually be able to get it, and apparently the majority of Americans have expressed doubts as to whether they will want to jab themselves with the fastest ever vaccine produced. Regardless, his forecast is pretty gloomy for those of us who love exploring the world.
You can read the entire transcript here if you like, but this is the portion where he anticipates that travel won’t rebound for years.
We continue to believe that in order to recover to pre-COVID levels, we will need to have a vaccine or effective treatment, which will take time to produce and distribute globally at the scale needed. We are pleased to have recently read news about progress on this front. But we believe it will be years and not quarters before the travel market returns to pre-COVID volumes.
In those countries and regions where shelter-in-place rules were relaxed and economies reopened, we witnessed booking trends improve quickly. We believe part of this initial burst of demand is due to people’s pent-up desire to go somewhere after being in a lockdown situation. It also demonstrates people’s deep desire to travel, providing it to safe.
Let’s juxtapose these comments alongside the comments of the CEO of AirBnb who famously said “travel as we knew it is over.” While Fogel isn’t going that far, he is indicating that their analytics speak to similar trends: people don’t want to go that far from home, and they don’t want to go to city centers.
In line with our growth in domestic travel, we are seeing that bookers are choosing to stay closer to home, and are more interested in less urban areas than pre-COVID.
Time will tell, but I’ve been living in hotels since July 3rd. None of my travel was for “leisure” and all of it was either to stay close to family and I would classify that as “close to home,” or travel to an area that I may move to and tour properties – or close to my future home. I haven’t taken a “vacation.” I’ve been bathing hotel rooms in bleach, using disposable plates, cups, knives, and forks, and if I lived close to family I wouldn’t be doing any of this since it’s a big pain in the butt and I don’t really feel at ease. The trend these CEOs are talking about, I would say I’m a part of, and despite contributing to the bottom line of several hotel chains in the last 30 some days, I don’t see myself taking a “leisure” trip for quite some time.
What do you all think?
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.