WASHINGTON, DC – One in four business travelers and one in five leisure travelers will not get the vaccine once it is available to them, according to the latest monthly Traveler Confidence Index developed by Travel Again. Additionally, 36% of business travelers and 30% of leisure travelers do not wish to take and share the results of COVID tests in order to resume traveling without restrictions.
“While it is encouraging that 78 percent of all travelers will receive the COVID-19 vaccine once it is available, that still leaves a gap and only increases the importance of implementing an industry-standard testing program to ensure safer travel,” said Travel Again Co-Founder Mike McCormick. “With overall traveler confidence reaching a very low, but plateaued level, the future of travel remains clouded with significant uncertainty.”
Additional Key Findings
- For business travelers, the most important confidence building elements include empty middle seats, limited crowd sizes, frequent cleaning and social distancing. Topping the list for leisure travelers is mandatory masks, frequent cleaning and social distancing.
- Uncertainty around U.S. domestic travel in the next six months has risen significantly among leisure travelers since October (21% to 34%).
- The number of business travelers who have made future reservations jumped to 19% compared to 9% last month, showing a promising uptick in what is still record-low levels of business travel.
Confidence Traveler Index: Business (2.59 to 2.66) and leisure (2.63 to 2.61) travel confidence largely plateaued between November and December.
Travel Again has developed the Traveler Confidence Index assessing confidence levels in both the business and leisure traveler to guide the prioritization of future travel industry initiatives by measuring the impact on traveler confidence. This third edition focuses on U.S. travelers and we will continue reporting out on the index monthly, and will ultimately expand to include other countries as well.