According to Delta and Booking.com CEOs summer travel prices will remain high
According to Delta and Booking.com CEOs, summer travel demand is expected to remain strong, with no signs of cooling off, and prices are expected to remain high.
“There’s still a lot of pent-up demand going back to the pandemic,” said Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel told CNBC. He added that his company saw a 26% increase in room nights in January compared to the same month in 2019. Fogel also pointed to the TSA checkpoint travel numbers, which are now within a few percentage points compared to the number of travelers seen in 2019.
Despite the high prices, Fogel notes that people are still willing to spend money on travel experiences. “I was in Miami earlier in the week, and it’s expensive, but people are willing to spend it,” he said.
Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian echoed this sentiment, saying that consumers are looking to make up for lost time. “[Consumers] have gone three years without having the experiences they want, including last summer,” he said. “International is clearly the place where people are trying to get back their experiences that they lost over the last several years.”
Despite facing higher costs on fuel and labor, Delta is seeing “record advance bookings for the summer,” with March advance cash bookings up nearly 20% compared to 2019 levels, according to company president Glen Hauenstein.
, summer travel demand is expected to remain strong, with no signs of cooling off, and prices are expected to remain high.
“There’s still a lot of pent-up demand going back to the pandemic,” said Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel. He added that his company saw a 26% increase in room nights in January compared to the same month in 2019. Fogel also pointed to the TSA checkpoint travel numbers, which are now within a few percentage points compared to the number of travelers seen in 2019.
Despite the high prices, Fogel notes that people are still willing to spend money on travel experiences. “I was in Miami earlier in the week, and it’s expensive, but people are willing to spend it,” he said.
Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian echoed this sentiment, saying that consumers are looking to make up for lost time. “[Consumers] have gone three years without having the experiences they want, including last summer,” he said. “International is clearly the place where people are trying to get back their experiences that they lost over the last several years.”
Despite facing higher costs on fuel and labor, Delta is seeing “record advance bookings for the summer,” with March advance cash bookings up nearly 20% compared to 2019 levels, according to company president Glen Hauenstein.
Expectations of strong travel spending
In the travel industry, expectations of strong consumer spending persist, even as other sectors signal a potential pullback. Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel told CNBC that there’s still pent-up demand from the pandemic, and consumers are eager to spend their savings. He also pointed to the strong rebound in travel seen in January and recent TSA checkpoint numbers.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy noted that while consumers are still spending, they are becoming more “deal conscious” and focused on price points. CNBC’s Financial Confidence Survey also found that 70% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and are concerned about their personal finances.
However, Fogel said he believes that “in the long run, travel is going to continue to expand better than GDP.” Delta CEO Ed Bastian added that consumers are shifting away from certain goods and into the service world, and predicted a multi-year recovery from the pandemic that will exceed expectations.