Holiday Flight Bookings up Thanks to ‘Pandemic Fatigue’

There has been a verifiable increase in COVID-19 cases across the U.S. of late, which obviously doesn’t bode well for a travel industry that has been hammered by the virus for the past eight months.

Or does it?

In an informative piece by Dawn Gilbertson of USA Today, airlines are reporting that holiday bookings are up in the past two weeks, and officials say they don’t believe there will be a dropoff – either in expectations or actual bookings – like there was with summer bookings.

“Based both on what our customers are saying and what our customers are doing, we see a clear divergence in terms of their attitudes toward the pandemic and their intentions towards leisure air travel,” said Scott DeAngelo, chief marketing officer for Allegiant Airlines. “That is to say, customers believe the situation may once again be getting worse, but their leisure travel activity or their travel booking intent remains largely unchanged.”

They’re calling it ‘pandemic fatigue,’ a nice way of saying that people want to travel again. Whereas the summer travel season began at the tail end of the first big wave of the virus in June, and travelers were skittish about getting on a plane, it’s now been more than eight months since COVID-19 hit U.S. shores, and folks are sick and tired of being home.

They want to get away, or they want to see family and loved ones, or both. Airlines say that travelers’ pent-up desire to go somewhere for the holidays is outweighing concerns about a new wave of coronavirus.

United CEO Scott Kirby told CNBC that bookings have “flatlined a little bit” due to rising case counts but said he still expected “pretty strong” holiday travel demand.

Allegiant CEO Maury Gallagher summed up the gradual return of airline passengers this way: “It appears pandemic fatigue is setting in.”