"Revenge Travel" Could Continue for YEARS

After many people canceled their trips and vacations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, air travel surged in 2022 in what some experts called the summer of “revenge travel.”

Crowds at Orlando International Airport

Now that it’s been almost a year since the initial surge, is the pent-up demand for flights finally abating? One airline CEO thinks it could still be a while before we see a return to normal demand levels.

We saw BIG crowds in Disney World in the summer of 2022 as many people took vacations that they’d previously postponed. But once the summer break ended, crowd trends at the parks seemed to return to a fairly normal schedule.

Crowds

According to the Delta Airlines CEO, the same isn’t true for flights. CNBC interviewed CEO Ed Bastian and asked him whether Delta has seen the pent-up demand for travel begin to wear off.

Airplane

In response, Bastian said, “Not at all.” He mentioned that President’s Day weekend was the start of the initial surge in 2022, and this coming holiday weekend shows that “there’s no sign that people were able to — in the space of a year — take care of almost 3 years of travel.”

Lots of people want to fly

Bastian believes that the trend of pent-up demand is going to continue for a while yet: “I think this is going to be a multi-year incremental demand set.”

Apparently, Delta Airlines is seeing strong booking numbers through the spring and early summer of 2023. Bastian noted that this is the case even with some international travel still at lower-than-normal levels: “We don’t even have China open yet, and other parts of Asia.”

Security lines at Orlando International Airport

Bastian also noted that changing trends in business travel have contributed to increased demand. Although fewer people are officially traveling for business (due to more people working from home), the increased opportunities for remote work means that people can travel more often and work from wherever they are. Bastian said that those travelers “take their work with them on the road, so they can travel and work from wherever they’re at. As a result of that, you see a significant incremental piece of business that we never saw before.”

Orlando International Airport

If you’re planning to travel soon, be prepared to join the continuing surge of “revenge travelers.” You may want to book your flight sooner than you did pre-pandemic to make sure your seat is secured and the flights don’t sell out. Another potential issue with high travel demand is longer security lines at the airport. We recommend arriving early to have more time to wait in line or looking into TSA Pre-Check, which may allow you to skip the line altogether.