The COVID-19 pandemic changed a lot about how people’s lives operate on a day-to-day basis, and many industries have been changed to look different than they did three years ago, and the travel industry is no different.
In 2019, the travel industry had a total of $1.17 trillion put into the United States economy, according to the U.S. Travel Association. When the pandemic hit, the number dropped significantly. In 2020, it dropped to $722 billion, and in 2021, it was $886 billion.
This year is a different story. According to the U.S. Travel Association, in 2023, the expected spending in the travel industry is $1.05 trillion, and it’s expected to finally return to the spending from 2019, with an expected spending of $1.15 trillion.
With an increase in spending comes an increase in travel, once again, but the way people are traveling might look different than before.
Sebastian Modak, a freelance journalist and former 52 Places traveler for The New York Times, said he thinks the travel industry is in a period of change that hasn’t been seen before.
“I think people are looking at travel a lot closer to home. They’re looking at less conventional places for escape or vacation,” Modak said. “They’re thinking differently about what it means to take a vacation.”
Modak said this might be because, after two years of the pandemic, many people miss human connection and are factoring that in more to their travel.
Modak isn’t the only one saying this either. In a survey done in the middle of the pandemic about what people want their next trip to feature, the top answers were: “Get to know other cultures more deeply” and “Meet new people/make friends”, according to World Packers.
Students at the university are no exception to this trend. Arturo Ochoa, biomedical engineering sophomore, has traveled to various spots since the pandemic restrictions have let up, including visiting family in Mexico, doing a studying abroad with programs in Italy, and then visiting Austria and Spain. Ochoa said when he is traveling, he wants to gain something he can’t get back home.
“I want to have experiences and see different cultures,” Ochoa said. “Culture expands your mind. The way people function in other societies — how something can be normal here and not over there — that’s what I want to experience.”
Ochoa is not alone in this. According to the Booking.com 2022 Sustainable Travel Report, out of 30,314 respondents from across 32 different countries, 66 percent of travelers want to have an experience that is representative of local culture, and 25 percent of people are willing to pay more for activities they know will give back to the local community in some way.
Modak said that many people might be asking themselves new questions when coming up with their next destination for a vacation.
“I think (the pandemic) made us rethink everything,” Modak said. “It’s made us rethink the carbon footprint of our travel, what we do when we’re on the ground. Does every vacation need to be at an all-inclusive resort? There’s nothing wrong with that, but maybe when people are planning their next trip, they’ll think about engaging more somewhere, they’ll wanna spend a lot more time outdoors. There’s been a lot that I think has been changing people’s values around travel, and why they travel.
According to Claire Newell, founder and president of Travel Best Bets in an article by Today, many people looking to travel want to support the local community and are choosing not to stay in chain hotels, rather to eat and stay in local spots and shop from local stores. The 2022 Sustainable Travel Report says that a third of travelers in the report said they are looking for a more locally relevant experience.
Many people are also trying to change their travel plans to help support the environment. According to the Booking.com 2022 Sustainable Travel Report, 81 percent of global travelers say that sustainable travel is important to them, with 50 percent of those saying that recent climate change news had led them to make more sustainable travel choices.
The report also says that many people want to travel outside of peak seasons to avoid overcrowding, or choose an entirely different destination altogether that is less popular. However, 42 percent of people say they struggled to find an appealing destination that is less crowded.
Not everyone is keen to go to back to normal, however.
Lena Ross, a psychology senior at OU, said that while she has traveled and lived in Japan before the pandemic, she is still cautious of the risks involved. Ross, said while she has traveled to Japan, a country she used to live in, since the pandemic has started to lighten up, she is still cautious of the risk involved.
“Before 2019, I used to go to Japan every year, and then because of COVID-19, I had to take a two year break,” Ross said. “When I was able to go back again, it was mostly the same, but there were a lot more rules. It wasn’t as easy to travel there.”
Ross didn’t mind the extra steps, however, saying that she feels like the U.S. doesn’t care about COVID-19, and she appreciates that Japan still does.
“The whole time I was there, we’re required to wear masks, we’re told not to go out if you feel sick at all, but here, I feel like COVID-19 has been gone for, like, a year,” Ross said. “Nobody really wears masks, and people still go out even if they feel sick. I’m that one person that is still wary of COVID-19. I still wear my mask everyday. The minute I don’t feel good at all I stay at home, and I feel like I’m the only one who wears a mask.”
Ross said that visiting another country where masking is still normalized is makes her feel more comfortable.
“Here, I’m standing out by wearing a mask, and even at work, I’m the only one,” Ross said. “Customers will say, ‘Oh they’re making you wear that?’ and I have to clarify: ‘No, I get sick easily, and I’m scared of COVID-19,’ but when I was over there everyone was wearing a mask. It would have been weird if I wasn’t wearing a mask.”
While these restrictions still may be common in Japan, across the globe this is not the case. Most countries have removed their mask mandates and COVID-19 travel restrictions, aside from a select few. Indonesia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Angola, Azerbaijan, Liberia and Ghana are still closed to U.S. citizens who are not fully vaccinated, and various other countries require visitors to quarantine no matter their vaccination status or negative test results.
When travel starts to change, the content written about it will change as well. Modak says that the pandemic helped propel changes that were much needed in the travel writing industry.
“I think (travel writing) is still in the process of figuring out what it is now, but it definitely has changed,” Modak said. “I think some of the changes were already underway. Maybe not a direct product of the pandemic, but also around the conversations around Black Lives Matter protests and everything else. A lot of industries, including travel writing, took a look at themselves and asked, ‘Are we really representing the world at large? Are we representing everyone when we talk about the world?’ And I think the answer was largely no. It’s good to see places shining more of a light on local voices, on marginalized voices, on the voices we haven’t heard in an industry that’s largely been dominated by white dudes.”
Modak says that while this isn’t a direct result of the pandemic, it did give many people a shock to their systems and helped propel it to the limelight, and can hopefully encourage people to rethink why we travel.
“I hope that this means we will move beyond the bucket list approach to travel, where we all need to go to the same place at the same time of year, to take the same photos to post to Instagram. I think that’s gonna become a thing of the past, as we try and have more meaningful experiences when we travel.”
While it may look a bit different than before, the travel industry is growing and will soon to reach the heights it had prior to the pandemic, although those heights may be spread out over a variety of different places, rather than the all-inclusive resorts and luxury cruises that have historically been seen on Instagram for years and years. In the post-pandemic age, the new travel may be more local, more community focused and more culturally diverse at all stages of the trip.
