Peering Through The Keyhole: The Gloomy 2022 Travel Forecast

By Robert McGarvey

Every year, around this time, I have spent a few minutes mulling my travel plans for the new year ahead and, occasionally, doing a mileage run to grab a better elite status and almost always planning at least one trip for fun.

This year is different. Mainly because it borders on the impossible to forecast what my travel year will look like.  If forced to guess I’d say pretty similar to 2021 which featured exactly one trip (to Spain in early fall; in 2022 I plan a trip to Portugal and Spain, from Porto to San Sebastian).

What about business travel?

Yeah, what about it?

I am looking at a report from polling firm Morning Consult on “The State of Travel and Hospitality – Q4 2021 Report” (free download here) that serves up immense gloom regarding business travel.

Just about all travel in fact.

Perhaps we are at a crossroad where – fueled by environmental concerns and triggered by the immediacy of Covid – our relationship to travel is undergoing immense change.

Keep in mind that the phenomenon of mass longhaul travel is recent – the first commercial trans Pacific flight was 1936 (Pan Am).  It wasn’t until the late 1950s that commercial jet travel took root and deep into the 1960s when it became commonplace.  Meaning we have maybe 50+ years of mass longhaul travel and that’s a speck in the history of human existence.

Don’t think we cannot turn off that desire.  It’s happening.  The Morning Consult numbers suggest as much.

One in three of us say it will be more than a year (12% say never) that they will travel for leisure.

Holding back an energetic return to leisure travel, per Morning Consult, is confusion and concern about Covid-related travel concerns and requirements.  When do I need a Covid test, what kind, by when? Do I need to carry my vaccination card? Can I get into country X at all?  Does the US State Dept. say it’s safe? Can I travel back home?

If you are not at least slightly frazzled by all this you are not paying attention.  It’s a world of numerous and shifting rules, requirements, and restrictions.  

Air rage is also keeping some of us on the ground – more of us than I would have thought. Per Morning Consult, 41% of us have traveled less because of concerns about the behavior of other passengers.

63% of us are at least slightly concerned about an air rage incident on their next flight.  Only 36% are not at all concerned which, I guess, is where I fall.  

63% of us also support a vaccine mandate for air travel (and 81% support it for international travel).  These numbers tell me that the anti vaxxers may be loud but their numbers aren’t so high as to matter when setting policies.  I urge the Biden Administration to listen to the people and to issue an Executive Order that mandates vaccines for air travel. That will help get more us in the air, more often.

As for business travel, the forecast is gloomy – and it is especially gloomy coming from people who had traveled for business at least three times a year. 39% of that group in the US now say they will never travel for business again.

Never.

48% of Germans say likewise. 62% of French.  39% of Canadians.  

Of the business trips that do occur, one in five will be day trips, says Morning Consult.  And 55% will make business trips by car. 15% will travel by bus. 16% by train.

Only 50% say they expect some trips to involve a plane.

Another shoe dropping – not reflected in the Morning Consult data – is that sustainability concerns may further deflate travel, especially long haul jet travel.  Accenture data say that 66% of us are “ramping up” their sustainable/ethical purchasing.  Wall Street and thus the C suite also are climbing aboard the sustainability wagon.  

That bodes poorly for jet travel.

Back at Morning Consult, it’s forecast is pure gloom: Business travel will never return to prepandemic levels. 

I agree.  And the dramatic word is “never.”

We definitely don’t know what the new normal will be regarding business travel. But it will be different. Lots different. We know that much.