Travel Trends – Traveling after the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic caused an almost complete stop in the tourism sector. We were at a time when traveling was becoming more and more universal and from one moment to the next we were forced to stay at home and cancel our trips. All of this movement will cause a change in travel trends after the pandemic.

There has been a massive cancellation of travel, people have changed their feelings about traveling, companies have changed their marketing strategies, there are new rules and recommendations, but what will be the travel trends in this new era?

Main factors that will influence travel trends

The main factors that will influence travel trends in the near future should be:

• Security: both perception and reality will matter. We will want to book safer trips and feel safe when we are making them;
• Health: rules, standards, and guidelines enacted by local authorities will influence travel trends;
• Hygiene: with the possibility of contamination, we will all prefer places where the commitment to hygiene is not compromised. For example, in Portugal, the creation of the “Clean & Safe” certificate is a symbol of trust for companies in the tourism sector;
• Brand Quality: brands that have a high commitment to quality will triumph in these new travel trends;
• Product value: with more limited resources, we will want to have high value for a product we are paying for.

Travel trends after the Pandemic

Domestic, Nature and Car Tourism

Border limitations, flight cancellations, rising unemployment, and a recession in the economy, bring uncertainty that should cause a decrease in leisure tourism in travel trends. For some time, countries will continue to have their borders closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly for visitors. It is estimated that at least 90% of the population lives in countries with border restrictions, so the impossibility of moving between countries should make traveling within our country one of the travel trends.

Check here our recommendations for Getaways in Portugal

Recommendations for avoiding crowded places and big groups of people should make us choose open places, more isolated and in the middle of nature. We often choose to travel abroad, but have we explored our city or country enough? Most cities have tourist attractions and taking into account financial and travel restrictions, this should be a growing option in travel trends.

As the car helps to have more social distance, it should be an option to be taken into account at the expense of traveling in public transport, thus making people feel more secure and able to enjoy their travel destination.

Change in destination choice and cancellation of major events

How many of us have ever dreamed of taking a trip on the Amalfi coast, or visiting Madrid’s gastronomic markets? The situation in countries such as Spain, Italy, or China, which were highly sought after destinations, but which registered high numbers of contamination and spread of COVID-19, should make them negative territories in travel trends. Large sports, cultural or musical events are usually the cause of large gatherings of people. With the recommendations for social distance, these events should be postponed or canceled until it is safer.

Decrease in business, religious, honeymoon and group trips

There are several types of travel and traveling in large groups is one of the options that has been growing. These trips usually require greater proximity between people, which for the time being is generally discouraged, therefore, this area of tourism should have a sharp drop.

Religious tourism is usually a reason for crowds, so due to the distance recommendations, this sector is expected to have a significant drop.

With the increase in remote work, business travel trends are expected to decline. While it is not completely safe to travel, companies should choose to work remotely using digital media, thus avoiding putting their employees at risk.

Due to the impossibility of conducting weddings along the lines we were used to, it is expected that there will be postponements in the celebrations and consequently, the honeymoons will not happen or will be postponed.

Increased air travel costs, but greater flexibility

With the decrease in scale in the aviation business and the possibility of implementing distance on the plane, aircraft capacity should decrease, so the cost of this decrease should be included in the tariffs. As uncertainty will become a constant in our travels, we can expect that there is more flexibility on the part of companies. The possibility of cancellation, postponement, or upgrade is expected to be more flexible.

Growth of Digital Nomads

With the growing policies of remote work, companies must initiate or continue a process of changing organizational cultures that will increasingly include remote work. This movement should provide that people can move and settle elsewhere and still continue to work for remote companies.

How should we prepare to return to travel?

• Be informed and know the local regulations, always consulting the official sources of the local authorities. See here the rules on the beaches in Portugal for 2020;
• Be aware of the importance of being responsible and adopting safe behavior according to the guidelines of health authorities;
• Be flexible and accept that any trip could be impacted by the pandemic.

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The world will continue to change and adapt to this new reality and you must expect an impact. It is not expected that everything will continue as it was before and we will all have to adopt more conscious and more responsible behavior.

What we know today allows us to begin to realize that we can somehow travel and enjoy this wonderful world, but at any moment everything can change and we must be prepared for it.