With the summer travel surge starting to fizzle out and fall setting in, the momentum in travel seems to be ebbing. The dip in Travel Intent is evident across most sectors, seemingly driven by seasonal trends, with some potential influence by cleanliness and customer service concerns with specific brands. However, there's a silver lining for some: budget airlines are witnessing a noticeable surge.
HundredX analyzed more than 280,000 pieces of customer feedback across the travel sector from August 2022 through August 2023 to find:
Discover HundredX insights into Travel Trends:
Over the past three months, Travel Intent has dipped for most travel industries except for travel booking sites. It fell the most for cruise lines (-3%), although cruise is still up 8% over the year. Cruise is the only travel industry to show Travel Intent growth over the year.
Perception toward customer service could help explain why the notable Travel Intent dip in cruise lines. Customer perception toward customer service dipped 5% for cruise lines over the past three months, more than any other travel-related industry.
Customer perception toward atmosphere and cleanliness also sank the most for cruise lines (-5%). Favorability sank for all travel-related industries, with hotels being the most resilient (-1%). The dips come after myriad news reports of unclean and potentially biohazardous situations on planes and cruise ships.
It’s not all bad news for the travel sector, however. Customer perception toward price increased for most travel-related industries over the past three months, jumping the most (+5%) for airlines.
Customer perception toward price increased the most for lower cost and international airlines over the past three months. Many airlines started offering fall travel discounts over the past couple of months – budget airline Breeze, for example, slashed costs by 30% in August. British Airways, meanwhile, lowered costs enough to beat Ryanair – a historically low-cost airline.
Price favorability increased for the biggest U.S. airlines as well, with Southwest and United jumping the most (+5%) over the last three months. Booking site Hopper found domestic flights in July were 11% cheaper than the year before. It expects flight prices to dip an additional 2% in August before rising ahead of winter holiday travel.
The biggest Travel Intent gainers are largely international and cheaper airlines. Some of these correspond to the biggest price perception gainers (Avianca, Breeze Airways). Still, many of these airlines, including Spirit and Ryanair, are known for their low prices, indicating customers are rotating towards budget airlines amid still high inflation.
And customers seem to be turning away from the bigger, more expensive airlines. Travel Intent dropped 3% - 5% for American, Delta, JetBlue and United since May. It rose 2% for Southwest, which has been recovering from a March low after it faced technical problems that grounded thousands of flights during the 2022 winter holiday season.
Please contact our team for a deeper look at HundredX's travel data, which includes more than 680,000 pieces of customer feedback across close to 180 travel-related brands.
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