Linchi Kwok, Ph.D.

Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky talked about the future of travel in a CNBC interview last week. He stated: “Travel, as we knew it, is over. It doesn’t mean travel is over, just the travel we knew is over, and it’s never coming back. It’s just not.” His statement made headlines last week, but he also suggested in the same interview:      “… travel is going to come back. It’s just going to take a lot longer than, you know, we would have thought, and it’s going to be different.” What do you think? Will people travel again? The glass is half empty   Some places saw a spark of confirmed infected cases of COVID-19 in just a few weeks after the local governments lifted the coronavirus restrictions . Florida, for example, reported that its daily case count had increased fivefold in just two weeks . Moreover, the median age of the new patients dropped to 36, indicating the coronavirus is now spreading among the younger age group.   Along with Florida, Texas and A...

Places are easing coronavirus restrictions . Travel companies are reopening their business with enhanced sanitizing measures . People are ready to travel again.   Do you see early signs of recovery? Here are some positive updates, although it is still too early to claim it is business as usual.   TSA   The  Transportation Security Administration  (TSA) reported that 430,414 people passed the security checkpoints at airports on Monday, June 8. That was about  five times  the record low traffic day of 87,543 in April and accounted for 16.27% of the air traffic in the same weekday one year ago at 2,644,981. It is worthy to point out that the figure reported in 2019 showed an  84% increase  from 2018, which recorded at 1.4 million only.   The traffic reported by TSA continued to climb to 502,209 on Thursday, June 11, the first time when the number passed half a million since the pandemic. Thursday’s traffic was at 18.77% of the 2019 level ...

As more places are easing coronavirus restrictions , travel companies are getting ready to reopen their business. Yet, do people want to travel again soon? If so, who are the travelers?   STR (Smith Travel Research), a leading data analytics provider for the lodging industry, conducted an opinion survey about travelers’ attitudes towards different types of accommodation facilities based on their preference from the past experience. One assumption for such an analysis is that travelers tend to stick to the same kind of accommodation facility for their trips.   STR surveyed 2,391 respondents who showed interest in travel for leisure purposes from four English-speaking markets, including the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Australia. They were asked if they would take fewer, the same, or more trips over the next 12 months.   Using March 11 th as the cutting point when the WHO (World Health Organization) declared a global pandemic, STR reported the changes in the propensity to ...