Staycations on the Rise Around the World

A combination of factors – mostly the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions on travel, partially an increase in hotel room costs – has led to a rise in staycations.

Research by Hoo, the online hotel room offer platform, has found that the level of staycations being taken across 16 global holiday hotspots has increased by an average of 18 percent when compared to this time last year.

With the cost of accommodation also climbing 16 percent, Hoo found more of an uptick in domestic demand for travel.

“This time last year, we were already starting to see caution where our holidays were concerned, as the growing threat of COVID caused uncertainty over travel plans. A year down the line and there’s an obvious shift away from international travel,” Hoo co-founder Adrian Murdock said in a statement. “The silver lining for the travel industry is that many holidaymakers are, at least, hoping to get away for a staycation this year. Although we currently remain in lockdown in many parts of the world, many are hoping that the easing of restrictions will allow domestic travel by the time the holiday season arrives.”

Hoo, a British-based company, is an online platform that allows users to book a hotel room at the advertised rate – or, in an interesting twist, to make an offer on the room which the hotel can accept or decline in real-time. Founders say the concept was born out of a conversation in a pub about the seeming imbalance of power that global hotel room aggregators wield.

Hoo analyzed statistics on booking momentum from SiteMinder across 16 key tourism markets, looking at the ratio of international and domestic holidays booked.

The figures show that, currently, an average of 76 percent of all bookings are for domestic holidays, with just 24 percent of bookings being made for holidays abroad. This is an 18 percent swing when compared to the same point last year when just 58 percent of bookings were for domestic holidays.

At the same time, this domestic demand seems to have caused an increase in the cost of staycations. Hoo also analyzed hotel room rates across major cities within each nation and found that the average cost of a room per night has increased by 16 percent.

“Of course, the downside to this uplift in demand is an increase in cost,” Murdock said, “and with so many of us looking to staycations to break the monotony, demand is pushing up hotel room rates by quite some margin.