Inflation tips

Travel prices across Europe have started to decline, following months of continuous hikes in air fares and hotel rates. However, they’re expected to remain highly volatile for several years as the market undergoes a correction.

U.S. budget hotels performed less well in the first few months of the year than they did a year ago. Does that weakness signal some U.S. travelers feel a pinch from inflation?

Last week, Skift Research published our Global Travel Outlook. The main takeaway was that 2024 will be a year of . 

Rising hotel room rates in the U.S. have stopped contributing to broader inflation. Hotel prices declined in December by 0.5% year-over-year.

In some parts of Europe, high prices and Christmas markets go hand in hand. But in others, this year’s soaring costs have come as a shock.

Visitors to the U.S. aren’t spending as much as they used to on lodging, food, local transportation, and entertainment.

More than one-in-five Americans plan on vacationing in a foreign country in the near future, the highest share ever recorded, even as overall consumer confidence was dragged down by worsening inflation expectations in August.

Australia’s Flight Centre Travel Group has a few issues with airlines at the moment.

Many consumer businesses bemoan rising inflation as a buzzkill, but not Hilton Grand Vacations. The timeshare company believes that consumers will find its stably priced product relatively more attractive compared to increasing rates for hotels and vacation homes.

Ryanair on Monday posted its largest ever after-tax profit for its key summer season and said it expected very strong passenger and fare growth for years to come as customers switch from higher-cost rivals.

This has been a year of growing optimism around the travel industry’s recovery, as well as growing pessimism about rising inflation, sky high rates, and a possible recession. Here are some of the highs and lows of the past year, in the form of 11 charts produced by the Skift Research team. 

Travel is picking up in the U.S. In December, 55 percent of Americans traveled, 10 percentage points higher than the same time last year. However, the number of respondents who travelled decreased by 2 percentage points in December compared to September indicative of typical seasonality in travel with the winter season commencing.

The global score of the Skift Travel Health Index remained stable at 97, as per our latest March 2023 update. This is unchanged from the previous month.

Most European travelers plan to take spring and early summer in the next months, according to a European Travel Commission survey. Around 40 percent will travel in June or July, while only 23 percent expect to travel in August and September, down 9 percent year over year. In April and May, almost 30 percent will take or took a trip.

Despite rising prices and economic uncertainty, many U.S. travelers seem to be ring-fencing their travel budgets from spending cuts, according to the latest survey by Skift Research.

Inflation is still a significant concern for large numbers of Americans but it isn’t putting a major dent in the urge to travel.

Rising hotel room rates in the U.S. are still contributing to an overall rise in the national cost of living, but the pace of hotel rate hikes is slowing, according to new numbers released on Tuesday.

Summer travel season is in full swing and we can already hear the complaints: “It’s outrageous what they’re charging for a hotel room these days!” The narrative goes that greedy hoteliers are taking advantage of pent-up vacation demand to gouge desperate travelers. But this is a myth and far from the reality of the hotel business today.

Palestinian pilgrim Abu Anas Abu Rahal was hoping to find cheaper lodgings for a week-long stay in Islam’s holiest sites in Saudi Arabia, as the minimum cost for the hajj pilgrimage climbed to 26,000 riyals ($7,000) this year. His options were limited.

Inflation be damned. Concerns about rising prices still aren’t slowing down pent-up travel demand in the U.S.

Travelers who made plans to hit the road this summer will likely notice the price of travel has gotten more expensive — in some cases, so expensive that many have decided to make changes to their planned trips. So why have hotel rates and airfaires increased from 2019 levels?