Modest gains in tourism over the summer were reversed in August and September, according to Booking Holdings, an online travel booking site.
Third-quarter hotel reservations fell 43 percent in the third quarter but plunged 70 percent the week ending 4 November, Bookings CEO Glen Fogel said to the Wall Street Journal.
Winter’s drop in business will be less severe than that last spring, but the fall-off likely will extend into spring 2021, CFO David Goulden added.
International air travel remains “very injured,” Peter Kern, Expedia Group CEO, said in a recent weekly commentary.
Still, Expedia and Bookings showed third-quarter profits after rounds of relentless cost-cutting, leading the companies’ share prices to rise 20 percent and 11 percent, respectively, in recent trading sessions.
However, the companies have said they do not expect to turn a profit in the current quarter.
In its third-quarter announcement, Marriott International also reported seeing travel slow in October.
The company said it was renting only about 37 percent of its rooms in September and revenue per available room sank 66 percent in the quarter compared to a year earlier.
Nevertheless, Marriott’s shares climbed 13 percent since the company announced these results on 6 November.
TREND FORECAST: As we noted in our “Trends in The News” video last Thursday, despite the severe downturn, share prices of Carnival Corp. and Royal Caribbean Group popped up 13 percent and 19 percent, respectively, after news of Pfizer’s vaccine test results were publicized.
And, as reported in this issue of the Trends Journal, Carnival stocks spiked again yesterday on news of another vaccine. However, as we forecast, even if the vaccine is effective, it is unlikely to be widely available until next summer at the earliest. With the “Greatest Depression” worsening, tourism will not bounce back to pre-coronavirus levels for years to come.
