Despite politicians who want to open states up ASAP, a whole lot of Americans, although not necessarily happy with where they are, have made lots of changes in terms of travel plans.
In early April, ValuePenguin, a personal finance website, did an online survey of more than 1,200 Americans to learn their thoughts about travel in the not-too-distant future. Not surprisingly, it seems that Americans’ views about travel in general have never been similar to what they’ve ever been before. Take a look…
According to ValuePenguin’s findings:
- 48% of Americans have canceled their summer 2020 travel plans (we didn’t do the survey but um, yeah, hand raised). 16% have not. 36% didn’t have summer travel plans yet.
- 46% of those who already had travel plans on the books have lost money (read: nonrefundable deposits, cancellation fees, etc.) The average loss was $54.30 per person. 59% of us lost money on airfare, 44% on hotel rooms. However only 22% who booked with Airbnb, and 21% who booked cruises said they lost money.
- 43% feel more negatively about the travel industry as a whole (well yeah…look at all the people who lost money on their travel plans!), and many will change their behavior as a result. 15% said they felt more positive about the industry and 42% said they felt about the same as always.
- 40% of American travelers are more likely to purchase travel insurance for future trips. On the flip side, 18% said the pandemic made them less likely to consider insuring their future trips.
- 36% of us say there’s no change in whether or not we would travel overseas. But 52% of us said we’re less likely to travel overseas (it appears that the financial strain may be playing a part in this). But 12% of us say they’re more likely to travel internationally (just my own thoughts about this one, but a sudden realization of, “YOLO, you only live once?”)
- 35% of Americans don’t expect to use all of their paid time off this year. With that, several said their employer changed PTO policies as a result. Those policies range from good (13% are allowing unused PTO to roll over into next year) to bad (20% are reducing the number of vacation hours for employees).
- 29% of us plan to travel in the next 6 months. However 35% think it’ll be longer than that; sometime between 6 months and a year. 16% of American don’t think they’ll be traveling for more than a year and 20% of just just don’t know.
- 25% of Americans are planning a celebratory trip once there’s no more threat of the virus.
There’s lots more info about the survey results on this page of ValuePenguin’s website. Granted, it’s a small survey size but they did say their sample base was proportioned to represent the overall population. I wouldn’t necessarily use it for a Master’s thesis, but taken as is, it’s still pretty interesting. Enjoy!
#stayhealthy #stayathome #washyourhands
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and get emailed notifications of when we post. Or maybe you’d like to join our Facebook group – we have 12,000+ members and we talk and ask questions about travel (including Disney parks), creative ways to earn frequent flyer miles and hotel points, how to save money on or for your trips, get access to travel articles you may not see otherwise, etc. Whether you’ve read our posts before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.