Trends & Research

98% of Travelers to USA Plan Return Visit!

August 4, 2020 by Tom Berrigan

Just-released NTTO 2019 data reveal rich treasure lode of Info on those who visit USA. The U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) recently completed posting of the 2019 states, cities, and regions visited by overseas travelers, as well as in-depth profiles and statistical portraits on the NTTO website’s the “Inbound Travel to the U.S.” page. (Click here) The data are now available in an Excel format, and go back to 1997.

“The most seismic change during this period” said Richard Champley, senior analyst & program manager National Travel and Tourism Office/Industry & Analysis,”was the proportionate increase in the number of females who visited the United States. In 2019, 48 percent of all overseas visitors were female compared with 34 percent in 1997.”

Champley also noted that “89.3 percent of all visitors rated their U.S. entry experience as ‘average/good/excellent.’ As well, 97.1 percent of visitors indicated their overall trip experience in the United States ‘met or exceeded expectations’ and 97.7 percent indicated they expect to visit the United States again.”

The 2019 data presented by NTTO have a special significance for the international travel marketer in the U.S., as they comprise the last full-year set for several years, with this year, 2020, a wash, due to the coronavirus-driven collapse of the international market for what looks like most of the year. Also, numbers for 2021, provided that NTTO has received data counts as well as information from the Survey of International Air Travelers* in a timely fashion, are a good two years off.

NTTO’s material includes profiles of overseas visitors containing characteristics from the Survey of International Air Travelers passenger responses. Profiles include a comprehensive view of overseas travelers, followed by segmentations by regions (9) and countries (Top 25) of origin. In addition, there are ten sector/activity profiles and special reports on U.S. states and cities visited in 2019.

Other Key Takeaways:

—While the 2019 overseas arrivals data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security I-94 records totaled 40.393 million visitors, marking a 1.3 percent year-over-year increase, total visitation to the 11 U.S. regions declined slightly by 1.2 percent.**

—Spending (travel and tourism exports, preliminary) estimates totaled $211.4 billion, down slightly from 2018. Revised estimates will be forthcoming. Country and regional spending estimates are included, when available, within the profiles. For example, the Italy profile shows that spending for total travel (all purposes) and passenger fares on U.S. carriers was estimated at $4.3 billion.

—Among the traveler Characteristics observed in 2019 versus 1997 (the first year that data were made available in Excel format), business-convention travel in 2019 was slightly lower than it was in 1997

Leisure-VFR (visiting friends and relatives) travel segments demonstrated sustained growth over the last two-plus decades, from 18.8M in 1997 to 33.1M in 2019 [see graph below]

Other Traveler Characteristics observed in 2019 versus 1997:

—The average number of states visited in 2019 was 1.4 states vs. 1.6 states in 1997. Also, the percentage of travelers visiting only one state was 75.9 percent of visitors in 2019, up from 63.1 percent in 1997.

—Length of stay in the United States averaged 16.9 nights, up from 15.4 nights in 1997.

—Average travel party size increased to 1.7 persons from 1.6 persons in 1997. A 6.3 percent increase in party size may have influenced other visitation statistics, i.e. lodging, as would changes in length of stay and number of destinations visited.

—The share of visitors using a ‘conventional’ tour package (including, at minimum, air and lodging)

declined to 13.3 percent from 22.5 percent in 1997. Tour packages were used mostly in Asian, European, and Brazilian markets. A growing number of ‘independent’ travelers utilized internet booking services to virtually assemble air and lodging reservations.

—The number of repeat travelers has increased over time, from 75.3 percent of all travelers in 1997 to 78.7 percent in 2019.

—Transportation usage in the United States: For inter-city travel the usage of bus travel increased while domestic air travel declined.

—The use of cruise, ship/river boat, for one or more nights, and ferry and scenic cruises has been holding at four percent since NTTO started to measure those modes in 2012.

For more reports, specific details, and information on these and other travel segments, please visit: https://www.trade.gov/national-travel-and-tourism-office. The “profile’ format and content of these reports were completely redesigned last year making them much more useful and user-friendly. Instead of a static PDF format providing only year-over-year data, NTTO expanded to an Excel format spanning more than 20 years of data. Please contact NTTO with questions/comments at 202.482.4753 or ntto@trade.gov.

* The Survey of International Air Travelers is an on-going primary research program which gathers statistical data about air passenger travelers in U.S.-overseas and U.S.-Mexican markets. Survey data provides information on passenger trip planning, travel patterns, demographics and spending for two separate populations—non-U.S. residents traveling to the U.S. and U.S. residents traveling from the U.S.

** While total overseas arrivals are captured via the Department of Homeland Security I-94/Arrival and Departure Information System records at U.S. ports of entry, each one of those arrivals can visit multiple destinations in the U.S. (Captured by Q.17 in the Survey of International Air Travelers). So, in essence there appears to have been fewer destinations visited. This is supported by the statistic in “Select Traveler Characteristics,” row 374, “% visiting one state only” = 75.9 percent, a high compared to previous years.

Will Industry Jobs Numbers Worsen?

July 21, 2020 by Tom Berrigan

From the U.S. Hospitality, Tourism, Travel and Activities (HTTA) Recovery Registry, Jonathan Elkoubi, CCO at VisitorTix, who is managing founder of the organization, has released the results of two HTTA surveys which, together, show its growth, as well as some small but meaningful numbers. While the base of respondents is likely to represent a fair number of respondents from the New York City metropolitan area, the fact that more than 1,400 individuals were motivated enough to respond to a survey is impressive. As for its statistical significance, that is another matter, although the number of respondents—more than 1,400 for the second survey—is sizable by any standard.

Perhaps the most disturbing change in the data from June to July results is the increase in the number of those in the “Unemployed/Laid Off/Job Eliminated” category—from 19 percent to 25 percent. The U.S. government’s Payroll Protection Program (an SBA loan designed to help businesses keep their workforces employed during the coronavirus crisis), which was extended late last month through August 8, is generally regarded as one that has helped tourism business employees keep a job. The expiration of PPP could very well result in more individuals ending up in the “Unemployed/Laid Off/Job Eliminated” category. Stay tuned for next month’s results.

Visit Philadelphia has Job Search Tool: In the meantime, HTTA is planning to expand the range of its activities with the development of a live industry job board, a continuous education resource center, and a recovery information repository. While that process takes place, Elkoubi pointed to a new program at Visit Philadelphia that could be a model for other DMOs who wish to play a more active role in help ex-employees find employment in the industry– https://www.visitphilly.com/jobs/.

In explaining the site to a local news station, Jeff Guaracino, president and CEO of Visit Philadelphia, said that before the creation of the site, job seekers would have to visit more than 50 different hotel websites to see what position may be available.

“It wasn’t easy to find and was time-consuming,” he added. “Our hope is that this new job section at visitphilly.com will make it quicker and easier for people to see all of the open positions that are currently open, and then down the line to find other positions that might up become available.”

Airline & Travel Industry Polls Not Kind

July 21, 2020 by Tom Berrigan

Is Confidence in Air Travel Diminishing? One-third of travelers say they will avoid flying for both leisure and busines in the future due to fears of catching COVID-19, according to a survey by IATA (International Air Transport Association). Other key findings from the 11-country survey, whose results were recently released, include the following:

When asked to rank the top three measures that would make them feel safer, IATA heard this:

—37 percent said Covid-19 screening at departure airports;

—34 percent agreed with the mandatory wearing of facemasks; a

—33 percent said social distancing measures on aircraft.

—45 percent of passengers surveyed indicated the they would return to travel within a few months of the pandemic subsiding—a significant drop from the 61 percent recorded in IATA’s earlier April survey.

—Other concerns raised by passengers include travelling on an over-crowded bus or train on the way to the aircraft, queueing at the airport, using toilet facilities at the airport and on the plane and ‘breathing the air on the plane’.

“This crisis could have a very long shadow,” said IATA’s director general Alexandre de Juniac. “Passengers are telling us that it will take time before they return to their old travel habits. Many airlines are not planning for demand to return to 2019 levels until 2023 or 2024. “Numerous governments have responded with financial lifelines and other relief measures at the height of the crisis. As some parts of the world are starting the long road to recovery, it is critical that governments stay engaged.”

In this study, 4,700 panel members from eleven countries (Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, India, Japan, Singapore, UAE, UK and USA) who traveled since July 2019 took part in the survey.

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UK Travel Companies Get Their Knuckles Rapped for Handling of Refunds—the 70 Best and Worst Firms for Travel Refunds. A new survey by MoneySavingExpert—MoneySavingExpert.com is a popular British consumer finance information and discussion website—put Virgin and Loveholidays near Ryanair near the bottom of its list for their rating in the way that they have handled refunds during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Three big names did particularly poorly,” said MSE, noting that “Ryanair continues to live up to its customer service reputation, scoring the worst of the major brands at a net score of -89 percent (worked out as the 1 percent who rated it ‘great’ minus the 90 percent who deemed it ‘poor’). It’s now joined by Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Holidays on -88 percent and Loveholidays on -81 percent.”

(See the methodology discussed following the two tables below.)

“Unsurprisingly,” said MSE “these three firms were also among the worst at refunding people, with 4 percent or less of their customers saying they’d had a refund to date. A majority of Virgin Atlantic and Ryanair customers also said they’d been waiting more than two months for a refund since first asking”.

MSE cautioned that, “While not a statistical random sample of the UK public, this huge survey does paint a strong picture of what’s going on in travel refunds. Here are the detailed results.” Below, INBOUND has tables of the Top Ten and Last Ten of MSE’s ranking of 70 travel companies.

The survey ran between Tuesday 30 June and Monday 6 July and had 77,101 individual responses about travel firms. The aim was to find out how people felt about their “refund experience” by asking them to rate it as “great,” “OK” or “poor,” and whether they actually got one.

Net score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of respondents who rated their experience as ‘poor’ from the percentage who rated their experience as “great.” The number who rated their experience as “OK” is not factored in.

MSE allowed users to include firms that weren’t in our initial list of options and have put them in the table if we received more than 100 responses for that particular firm. The 100-response threshold is why most of the firms included are national brands, rather than smaller, independent companies.

*Asterisks denote firms that weren’t included in MSE’s initial lists.

Business Travel Expects Gradual Recovery

July 7, 2020 by Tom Berrigan

New Global “State of the Market” study details when businesses expect to resume corporate travel.

While corporate travel businesses operate by a different set of metrics for what counts as healthy margins than do the leisure travel segment, their glide path is usually similar to the general ups and downs of tour operator and leisure travel agent performance. If so, the principal findings of the recently released “State of the Market” survey by global TMC, FCM Travel Solutions, and sister SME-specialist business travel provider Corporate Traveller are encouraging. (FCM Travel Solutions is the corporate travel business of the Flight Centre Travel Group.)

In essence the study tells us that the majority of organizations will take a phased approach to resuming domestic and international business travel over the next 12 months according to the first phase of a combined of the survey.

A total of 1,600 business travel managers, bookers and travelers at FCM and Corporate traveler clients in the Americas, EMEA, Asia, India, Australia and New Zealand took part in the survey in order to give both TMC divisions greater insight into their clients’ prevailing sentiments on business travel conditions as countries emerge from the COVID-19-driven global pandemic.

Clients taking part in the study, which was conducted by FCM’s consulting arm 4th Dimension (4D) spanned national businesses spending around $100,000 per annum with Corporate Traveler, to large multi-national customers managed by FCM with annual travel spends of over $100 million. Following are some of the survey’s findings:

—Seventy percent of participants agreed or strongly agreed that they expected to increase business travel gradually over a period time with a consensus peaking in business travel returning domestically in one to three months (40 percent of respondents) and internationally in six to twelve months (32 percent of respondents).

—The easing or complete lift of border restrictions ranked as the primary trigger for resuming business travel (70 percent said this would have significant impact) closely followed by organizational endorsement that it is safe to travel (68 percent of respondents indicated that traveler safety will have a significant impact and must be reflected in travel policy). However only half of respondents believe that their business travel volumes will eventually reach pre-coronavirus levels.

—Business travel recovery will be led by Asia and EMEA, according to survey participants in those regions. In Asia, 50 percent of respondents have already begun booking domestic travel and 37 percent expect to resume international travel in three to six months. In EMEA, 37 percent of survey participants expect to travel domestically within one to three months, and 32 percent anticipate starting to book international trips within three to six months. This is due to faster opening of borders intra region and easer movement geographically compared to the rest of the world.

—The highest level of uncertainty around when domestic and international business travel will resume significantly was in the Americas with 28 percent of respondents saying that they did not know when travel would return.

—Winning new business (43 percent of respondents) and managing existing client relationships (39 percent of respondents) are the two dominant business activities motivating organizations to a return to travel.

—While a large portion of respondents indicated a need to revamp travel policy post Covid-19, 28 percent of respondents were unsure what needed to change. Of those that did indicate areas for travel policy change, “health and hygiene” and “duty of care” considerations were the two dominant categories.

—Asked whether changes implemented during Covid-19 will reduce their need for business travel, there was a 50/50 split between participants agreeing or disagreeing

There was no distinct differentiation in these findings when comparing FCM responses with those from Corporate Traveller clients.

New Data Show Dearth of Arrivals in May

July 7, 2020 by Tom Berrigan

The latest overseas travel arrival figures—for the month of May 2020—posted by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) are disappointing, although expected, as they show a virtual absence of travel to the United States as the world’s travel and tourism industry copes with impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic. And it is unlikely that the statistical picture will change once the data for June are released later this month.