How Is COVID-19 Continuing to Impact the Agency Business?
by Daniel McCarthy /
Today, TMR and MMGY released their Wave III of Travel Advisors COVID-19 Sentiment Barometer and the results show some trends accelerating, but most remaining the same, as COVID-19 continues to impact the travel industry.
The survey, which was conducted from Aug. 24 to Sept. 8, includes input from 440 travel advisors.
COVID-19, even with the major fallout since March, continues to drag business down—almost three-out-of-four advisors (73%) surveyed said they expect business to be down 75% or more for 2020, a number that has risen from 59% in June.
Domestic destinations are still the most common inquiries from consumers as 40% of all current inquiries in August were about domestic destinations. Florida, Alaska, National Parks, and Hawaii were some of the more popular US/Canada destinations, advisors said. The rest of the inquiries were about cruises (27%), global destinations (25%), and Canadian destinations (8%).
One of the changes in the data from July to August was the accelerating of the shorter booking window—20% of incoming North American travel bookings are for the next 30 days, up from 16% in July.
August also saw a boost in interest in staying at small boutique hotels (20% versus 14% in July), a boost in interest in private villas/cabins (20% versus 12% in July), and a boost in interest in all-inclusive resorts (16% versus 1% in July).
The biggest obstacles continue to be health concerns related to COVID-19 (87% said it was a significant or somewhat of a barrier to bookings) and government advisories and travel restrictions (89%). Concerns the visitor experience will be too affected by closures and/or restrictions dropped from 88% in July to 81% in August.