The new year in travel has begun on a positive note, according to the findings of a just-completed survey by Travel Experts. To that effect, the majority of its advisors reported that as many as 80 percent of their clients have booked travel since the beginning of 2022, while less than 10 percent of clients have canceled trips already on the books. Some advisors even reported that over 90 percent of their clients are booking trips at this time.
"This is a welcomed positive trend in booking patterns, especially after the rush of cancellations at the end of 2021 as a result of the flare up of the COVID Omicron variant across the world," said Sharon Fake, director of operations for Travel Experts, in a press release.
The advisors have reported an average of 35 bookings in the first five weeks of 2022 with some reporting as many as 60 to 70 bookings in this period. As in previous surveys, Europe leads all destinations in bookings for spring and summer 2022. Meanwhile, Caribbean and Mexico vacations lead the way for winter bookings taking place right now. U.S. destinations in the Southeast and West, along with Africa and South America are the next-most-popular vacation spots being booked by Travel Experts advisors at this time.
On the cruise front, Travel Experts says bookings are mixed and Wave Season has not been what was experienced in the past.
That said, the picture is not completely bright as advisors are still having problems resulting from the pandemic. Some challenges according to Travel Experts advisors include concern about war and unrest in Europe, COVID-related complications while traveling, the time it takes to get information back from suppliers, hold times, navigating travel requirements for each country/destination, last-minute bookings and finding inventory, among others.
Some of these challenges, however, could be seen as “good problems to have” — they signify that people are inquiring about travel and that advisors are being kept busy. On that note, Jolene Detillion of Your Travel Designer, LLC, an independent affiliate of Travel Experts, says, "All in all, luxury travel is back and stronger than ever. Fingers crossed that nothing impacts travel drastically moving forward; however, we feel that we are in a much stronger position now to weather any storms than we were two years ago."
Visit www.travel-xperts.com.
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