TORONTO–Contrary to perceptions, consumers actually spent more on travel during the pandemic, not less, according to a new study.
The analysis, the June Barcode Report from Sensibill, examined consumer travel spend during the pandemic and found:
- Travel Consumer Spend in the US increased by 121% since the onset of the pandemic, “Ever since the onset of the pandemic, there has been a slowdown in travel. However, in the U.S. consumer spending on travel saw a spike during the same period.”
- Luggage related expenses declined by eightfold in the U.S. “Since people are traveling closer to home, consumers no longer need to spend on luggage and baggage carriers. Luggage-related expenses have declined by eight-fold since the pandemic.”
- As expected, travel-related average spend during COVID declined by 46%. “However, when we looked into the average spend by item categories by region, we saw the overall average travel expense increased in the U.S. by 121% while it declined by 86% in Canada over the same time period, despite a higher rate of infection per capita in the U.S. than in Canada.”
Traveling Closer to Home
“When we looked more closely at the type of travel spending in the US, we were able to break travel spending down to show an increase in travel-related accommodation expenses threefold, increase in travel-related transportation expenses fourteenfold, increase in travel-related parking expenses twofold accompanied with the decline in luggage expenses by eightfold, pointing us to the fact that consumers in the U.S. were still taking breaks and vacations, just closer to home,” the company said.