TripAdvisor Sees Increased Hotel Traffic in Spain After Vaccines

TripAdvisor sees increased hotel traffic in Spain and that holidaymakers are likely to stay for longer.

THE new travel trends research paper released by TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel guidance platform, reveals that vaccine rollouts globally are driving increasing demand for summer holidays, with vaccinated travellers more likely to stay longer and spend more on their trips than unvaccinated travellers.

“In Europe too, recent trends point to a recent improvement in traveller confidence. Of the eight major markets to have experienced growth in hotel traffic since the turn of the year, four are in mainland Europe – with Spain, Italy, Germany and France all seeing significant growth in hotel search traffic on TripAdvisor,” the report said.

The report, “A Shot in The Arm for Travel? Examining the Vaccine’s Impact on Leisure Travel Demand” identifies clear behavioural differences in how vaccinated and unvaccinated travellers are thinking about travel, and how that is translating into travel planning behaviours on the TripAdvisor platform, with vaccinated travellers more likely to be booking vacations already, and to be planning to stay longer and spend more when they travel.

In countries like the UK and America, where the vaccination rollout has reached large swathes of the adult population, eager travellers are pushing the tourism recovery forward. At the other end of the spectrum, countries where the vaccine rollout is at a less advanced stage and new variants of Covid-19 have impacted local populations – particularly across the Asia-Pacific region – are experiencing a slower recovery in leisure travel demand.

“Higher income millennial travellers were driving the demand for leisure travel this past spring, but heading into the summer the age demographic of travellers now booking up vacations has broadened significantly, at least in countries where large populations have been vaccinated,” said Stephen Kaufer, CEO and co-founder of TripAdvisor.

“If ever we needed proof that vaccines are the key to long-term recovery in the tourism sector, our latest trend data provides it. Now the focus must be on governments and international organisations to ensure vaccines reach every part of the world as quickly as possible and make it as easy as possible for vaccinated tourists to travel globally once again,” he added.

Vaccinated travellers are a key driver of demand – when surveyed, a third of vaccinated travellers globally said they had booked a domestic vacation, of whom 80 per cent agreed that the vaccine had been a factor in their decision to book. By comparison, less than a fifth of unvaccinated travellers had already booked a domestic trip.

Among those yet to be vaccinated, nearly half of those planning a domestic trip are waiting to receive at least one dose of the vaccine before booking.

During the first week of May, nearly half of all international accommodation searches on TripAdvisor were for stays lasting six days or more.

Globally, more than a third of vaccinated travellers surveyed plan to spend more on their next trip compared to what they spent on travel prior to the pandemic, while only a fifth of those yet to receive the vaccine plan to do so.

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