Vacations slip into business trips | a job

Travel writer Javier Reverte used to say that the best trips are always the next. Given consumers’ resistance to abandoning tourism, there must be some reason.

The truth is that after a 2020 in which restrictions on tourism led to the disappearance, with empty hotels and consumption of services at least, in 2021 and 2022 the sector emerged in one of the most extraordinary rebounds in consumption. It gave the impression that consumers were retaliating against activities related to leisure, vacation, and travel to make up for all the tourism they were unable to do during the pandemic.

In 2023, users don’t seem willing to give up on travel, not even in the face of flight and hotel prices hitting all-time highs due to inflation and the soaring cost of fuel. Although more than half of Spanish consumers are reducing their spending percentage in almost all categories due to runaway price increases, a detailed analysis reveals that the travel and hotel component continues to grow. This is evidenced by a study I conducted inside the IESE Intent HQ Chair based on the Fintonic database, which contains 199,833,170 purchases made by 253,470 Spaniards between January 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023, which I include in my latest book, It’s all terrible, but I’m fineedited by Aecoc.

According to this report, Spanish consumers allocated 4.1% more of their budget to travel and hotels in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. In absolute terms, we are talking about an average of 123 euros per user in the first quarter of this year against 113 Euros in the same period of the previous year, after eliminating the effect of inflation, i.e. in 2022 prices.

UK users are not far behind, he confirmed Bright Saturday. This is the name given in the United Kingdom to the first Saturday after New Year’s Eve. It’s a kind of “Groundhog Day” that, instead of predicting whether winter will last another six weeks, predicts how the tourism sector will behave that year, because it’s the day most Britons book their holidays. Surprisingly, the data from Bright Saturday In 2023 it was very positive: 11% more consultations took place Connected And in applications compared to 2020, when the Covid-19 virus had barely entered our lives. In addition, 1.9 million people (more than double the number in 2019 and 2020) have used one of the four most popular travel apps in the UK.

Two upward trends can contribute to the consolidation of the sector: entertainment and the flex cations, which we can translate as “ng-Leisure” (i.e. a combination of work and leisure) and “Flex-cations” (flexible leave). The first term refers to the fact of taking advantage of part of a business trip to take two days off; For their part, “flexibility” will be the emerging trend of extending leisure trips, taking advantage of the possibility of working remotely from the point of travel.

Both directions are being driven by remote work. And this despite the fact that we seem to have breakfast every day with the news that another company has decided to end remote work for its employees, more and more people work remotely at least one day a week and confirm that this way of working is leading to more travel. Plus, add nearly 30% on a Friday or Monday to their weekend stays and remote work from their entertainment destination.

These two phenomena raise three questions. First of all, are these changes really happening or is it just a perception far removed from reality? If yes, how can this affect the business of hotels, airlines and travel agencies if the consumer goes on long weekends and short domestic vacations instead of long international flights of 10 days to 2 weeks? Finally, is it a temporary phenomenon or are we facing a profound cultural change that will continue when the situation returns to normal?

In fact, these types of vacations are more common in the United States, where remote work is more cohesive than in the European Union. In the European Union, on the other hand, we still have very little data from airlines and travel agencies.

On the one hand, it is difficult for the holiday structure to undergo radical changes. Yes, we will be able to see how the consumer avoids the highest prices when traveling by not being forced to travel on days of high demand. You can also extend your stay and work remotely until your return.

Finally, it’s hard to tell if “ng-Leisure” and “Flex-cations” are here to stay. We repeat the same phrase that applies to remote work and e-commerce, but time has mitigated both phenomena. In addition, the answer will vary depending on the consumer we are talking about. For the Spaniards, for example, the prolongation of the “bridges”, those holidays bordering on the weekend, is as national a habit as there is, but it is too early to say that telecommuting presupposes a fundamental change affecting holiday spending and holidays. structure in decline for a long time.

Perhaps we should understand the phenomena of “leisure” and “elasticity” as resources for consumers to continue taking vacations and avoid the decision that would be more economically rational: cutting discretionary expenses apparently in the context of massive inflation, with no sign of abating in the near future.

We have already seen the consumer appreciation for leisure and tourism, interrupted only by force majeure, by government compliance and bans. Now that these conditions no longer occur, will you give up on them simply because of the tensions in your life? financial flow available? For now, it seems unlikely.

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