The Top 10 Travel Research Reports of 2022

25.08.2023 - 14:34 / skift.com / Wouter Geerts / Skift Research

Skift Research produces a wide range of reports and data tools. The big trends in the industry guide us in choosing the topics we cover, and our readers, through their reading and feedback, tell us which reports and topics hit the mark in 2022. 

This is a rundown of the most popular reports produced by Skift Research over the past year.

Many of our reports this past year were framed around the return of demand for travel. Skift Research has uncovered, at length, how the returning demand might differ from the pre-pandemic normal. 

We conducted our 2022 Traveler Survey to understand the crucial questions on how the pandemic has changed consumer travel habits and patterns, what might be short-lived and what might be long-lasting shifts. We surveyed travelers from five major tourism markets — the U.S., UK, Australia, China and India — to get a global perspective as well as detailed country-specific trends. In this report, two areas that emerged from the pandemic and are shaping travel in fundamental ways were covered: sustainability and remote work.

Remote work and its impact on travel is a big part of what Skift has coined The Great Merging. The merging of how people live and work means that they have the potential to travel more frequently and for longer trips than ever before, which makes now the ideal time for subscriptions to make a breakthrough in travel. Subscriptions create recurring revenue that can compound on itself. This lets companies grow at exponential, rather than linear rates. The report provides three case studies: eDreams ODIGEO in distribution, Selina in hotels, and Inspirato in alternative accommodations to explain how subscriptions can completely alter the concept of marketing in travel. 

Speaking of marketing: as travel has returned with a vengeance, we would be remiss not to check up on the impact Google is having on the online distribution space. This report asks and answers some key questions on the impact of Google. It concludes that Google’s influence on the travel industry has only expanded during the pandemic and the search platform is now firmly entrenched at the top of the travel marketing funnel. The last decade saw fierce battles for market share and user growth. But now we believe the metasearch wars are ending; Google has won.

The growing power of Google is not good news for two of its biggest customers: Expedia Group and Booking Holdings. But as this report points out, both companies have started down differing paths to try and remain relevant. Where their traditional value as collators of inventory is depleting, both companies are attempting to offer consumers with other value add products. Booking is focusing on its connected trip offering, while Expedia is betting