Planning To Stay Home For The Holidays
In its most recent international tracking study of American travellers, Longwoods International reports that half of American travellers are currently planning to stay home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or New Years.
A similar percentage reported that COVID-19 will greatly impact their travel decisions in the next six months.
On the other hand, four in ten American travellers are planning a holiday road trip, while less than a quarter intend to fly. Travellers’ plans for holiday trips are equally split between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.
Amir Eylon, president and CEO of Longwoods International, said: “With the number of new COVID cases rising in more than half the states, we can expect further disruption in family holiday travel plans.”
Eylon noted: “The number of actual holiday travellers in 2020 will likely be driven by the perceived safety and/or risk of taking such trips during the holiday period.”
According to the most recent survey, over a third of American travellers support opening up their local communities to visitors, a slight decline in support in the past month.
Conversely, local consumer confidence has remained stable with about half of travelers feeling safe shopping in local stores and eating in local restaurants.
The survey, supported by Miles Partnership, was fielded Oct. 7, 2020 using a national sample randomly drawn from a consumer panel of 1,000 adults, ages 18 and over. Quotas were used to match Census targets for age, gender, and region to make the survey representative of the U. S. population.
