Has Revenge Travel Demand Peaked?

With recession fears still high and domestic vacation planning for the next six months continuing to flag, the revenge travel trend everyone’s been talking about might be showing signs of peaking, at least according to The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index.

The Conference Board is a non-profit Think Tank that tracks and analyzes business conditions, consumer attitudes, and more.

“… vacation plans within the next six months continued to flag, led largely by declines in plans to travel domestically,” said Dana Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board. “This is an important indicator of desires to spend on services ahead, which may be a signal that post-pandemic ‘revenge spending’ on travel may have peaked and is likely to slow over the rest of this year.”

Other big-ticket expenses have slowed as well, including plans for purchasing cars and homes.

The percentage of families feeling good about their financial futures remains low, with slightly fewer saying their current financial situation is good and slightly more saying their financial future over the next six months will be better.

In June, only 28.5% of consumers said their current family financial situation is “good,” down slightly from 29.2% in May. On the flip side, only 18.2% said their current family finances are “bad,” which was slightly better than in May when 19.5% said their current family finances were “bad.”

It’s a slightly rosier outlook when looking forward. In June, 30.3% of families said they expect their family finances to be “better,” up from 28.9% in May. And only 13.7% said they expect their family finances to be “worse,” down from 14.9% in May.

Additionally, recession fears have dipped slightly with 69.3% of consumers in June believing that a recession is “somewhat” or “very likely” versus 73.2% in May.

In June, only 12% of consumers (all ages) reported being unable to plan for a vacation due to financial reasons. When looking only at consumers aged 55 or older, 16% said they won’t be able to plan for a vacation due to financial reasons.