Top U.S. officials had openly professed hopes the upcoming Fourth of July weekend would mark a return to normal for the country, with a target of at least 70% of adults having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by that point.
With the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxing mask recommendations and various states and municipalities rolling back their own restrictions as more Americans get vaccinated, a varied landscape with differing levels of regulation has created a situation where it's often left hoteliers to determine themselves whether mask and social-distancing requirements are still needed on property.
Hotel demand patterns have shifted dramatically across segments in the hotel industry. Leisure travel demand has kept many hotel businesses afloat while the industry waited on the return of business travelers and group bookings. Hoteliers operating in each of those segments were forced to make a raft of changes to deal with the changing landscape.
This isn't a widely shared opinion at the moment. Corporate road warriors have largely stayed away from airports during the pandemic, even as cooped-up Americans have taken advantage of the vaccine rollout to plan getaways and visits with family. In a jam-packed week for airline earnings, American Airlines Group Inc. said daily net bookings had actually outpaced 2019 levels over the past week. But the bulk of that is from domestic leisure travelers; business and long-haul international demand is only 20% of what it was before the pandemic. Southwest Airlines Co. estimated business travel will still be down at least 50% at the end of this year compared with pre-Covid levels and Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said he wouldn't be surprised if the market didn't fully recover for another decade.
With more than a billion vaccinations already administered against COVID-19, there's the tantalizing sense that we might soon return to our former traveling lives. In just the past few days, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said that his country would soon reopen for tourists, including Americans, and French President Emmanuel Macron told CBS News that France would allow vaccinated Americans into the country during the summer tourist season—"with a special pass, I would say."
Four in five business travellers (81%) have seen their jobs affected by a lack of cross-border business travel, new research shows.
Four in 10 European business travellers plan to fly less after COVID-19 travel restrictions are fully lifted, a survey showed on Monday, with many intending to stick to video conferences.
After more than a year of quarantines and social distancing, the world is on the verge of opening back up since hundreds of millions of people around the globe have received a COVID-19 vaccine. IBM's Institute for Business Value polled more than 15,000 adults worldwide in February to gather opinions on everything from the workplace of the future, social trends, shopping and travel in a post-vaccine world.
A year into the pandemic, leisure travel appears to be picking back up, but many expect business travel won't come back in the same way — a disappointing projection for the nearly two-thirds of business travelers who enjoy their jobs less while grounded.
Widespread availability of Covid-19 vaccines could be a matter of weeks away in the United States, which will be a key component of corporate travel industry recovery but also is presenting new policy, technology and ethical considerations with which corporate travel programs must grapple.
Airlines and others in the travel industry are throwing their support behind so-called vaccine passports to boost pandemic-depressed travel, and authorities in Europe could embrace the idea quickly enough for the peak summer vacation season.
As America hurtles toward a post-pandemic future, some pre-2020 customs won't survive the transition. Chief among those up for re-evaluation: business travel. On the latest Pivot podcast, Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher discuss whether the corporate-funded journeys of the past make sense anymore.
With many countries or states already requiring a negative test to travel, the concept of a resort bubble provides one more layer of assurance as more Americans demonstrate comfort in traveling to destinations that make visitors feel safe. While Spring Break travel may earn the wrong kind of headlines, resort bubbles provide an alternative method of travel that can be effective.
While other philosophers questioned the meaning of the universe, Gottfried Leibniz famously asked why it exists at all. The pandemic has created its own economic Leibniz moment with business travel.
The "Plague Island" headlines splashed across the front pages said it all.With its out of control infection rates and deaths heading past the 125,000 mark, the UK started 2021 as Europe's Covid pariah.
Singapore has launched a travel "bubble" business hotel that allows executives to do face-to-face meetings without a risk of exposure to the coronavirus, in one of the world's first such facilities.
As coronavirus vaccinations ramp up in the United States, many grounded travelers are likely looking forward to planning their first fully vaccinated getaway—perhaps booking a long-awaited flight to visit family they haven't seen since last year.
Arne Sorenson's tenure as CEO of Marriott International was marked by deals designed to grow the company into a global powerhouse in the hotel industry.
Pity the travel influencer (or don't; it's easy not to). Before COVID-19, the art of stoking wanderlust was defined by selling a fantasy—the promise not only of a perfect vacation, but of a self somehow fortified and made special by going to the same bleached beaches and blue-domed Greek villages as everyone else. But now, almost a year into a pandemic that's grounded people like never before, professional nomads find themselves being excoriated for the very same thing they built their reputations on: escaping reality for far-flung places most others can't reach.
Over the past year, the world has seen a lot of changes due to the coronavirus. One of the biggest industries hit has been the travel industry. Travel was restricted in practically every country, impacting both personal and business travel. However, as the Covid-19 situation continues to improve, travel has also started to increase. More people are beginning to travel again, albeit with some changes. This is especially true in business travel, as businesses have had to make some major changes in order to continue operating.