When can we travel again? Experts share their predictions

When can we travel again?

Maybe a summer road trip. Maybe Europe in fall. Maybe 2021.

Ask an expert when Americans are going to start hitting the road and flying freely again, and you’ll get a spectrum of answers. The optimists lean toward summer. Others think it will be longer.

You also hear a lot of theories about how the recovery will happen — road trips first, flights later — and how this pandemic may change the world of travel in the long term — lost little shops, high-priority hygiene.

But nobody really knows, because the virus is in charge.

Here, as the U.S. and Europe face some of the pandemic’s darkest days so far, is what some industry leaders — and one doctor — say you can expect.

WHAT’S IN THE CARDS FOR SUMMER?

A more or less normal summer of travel “can be in the cards, and I say that with some caution,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said recently on “CBS This Morning.”

Fauci said summer activities depended on continued success in flattening the virus’ rate of transmission — and could change rapidly in the event of a spike in infections.

A recent Harris Poll asked Americans how long after the curve flattens they would go to a hotel: “One fifth of Americans (21%) say they will stay in a hotel within a month,” with the figure rising to 41% within three months and 60% within six months.

For airlines, the tipping point for most Americans to return to flying comes after four to six months. And more than half said they’d wait a year or more before going on a cruise, according to the poll.

Roger Dow, chief executive of the U.S. Travel Association, thinks travel will rebound, just not as quickly and not all at once.

One thing for sure, Dow said, “Americans generally are going to stay home until next year. … Europe is done for American travelers.”

“The most important thing as an industry is that we have to be ready for when that moment comes.”

Whenever that may be, there is the matter of gearing up, hotels reopening and flights being added back to a schedule that saw a drop of nearly 60% from Jan. 6 to April 6, according to OAG, which analyzes airline data.

The U.S. was slightly better than average; flights declined 45.2% in that time period, but Germany, Spain, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom were down 90% or more.

The rebound will not occur as quickly as the collapse, but as it does, OAG analysts said, domestic will come back first. But don’t get that bag packed just yet; OAG analysts think the beginning of the recovery will occur in two to three months.

WAIT UNTIL 2021

Rick Steves, who publishes travel guides, makes PBS travelogues and operates Rick Steves’ Europe tours from an office in Edmonds, Wash., has canceled all tours with start dates through May 31. He’s on the brink of canceling more, including one that has special meaning for him.

To celebrate his daughter’s marriage, Steves arranged a 20-day grand tour of Europe that included about two dozen family members taking up a tour bus. They were going to start June 16 in Amsterdam.

“I’ve yet to cancel that, but I’m on the verge,” Steves said.

In fact, “I’m psychologically prepared to have no tours this year,” said Steves. “That’s the thing about this crisis: We just don’t know. … I’ll be grateful for anything we can salvage out of 2020.”

When restrictions do ease, he said, “I think the first thing that will come back is regional travel: going to the city that’s three hours away by car. What you don’t want to do is fly somewhere and find yourself in a situation where you’re going to be quarantined.”

When international travel does pick up again, “I know we’re going to find an eager and welcoming Europe,” said Steves, whose business withstood Sept. 11, 2001, and the recession of 2008. “When something stops travel and people start coming back, it’s a beautiful moment for all involved. … I’m going to be patient.”

A DRIVING TRIP IN JULY?

Alan X. Reay, president of the Irvine, California, hotel brokerage firm Atlas Hospitality, expects the recovery to start with short summer trips to small hotels.

If progress against the pandemic continues as some have forecast, Reay said, he’s guessing that leisure travelers will begin venturing out “sometime in July. The (hotel) properties that will recover the fastest are those that are located in drive-to markets. … You’re going to have people reluctant to travel by plane.”

The hotels that recover the fastest, Reay said, “are going to be the smaller hotels. Especially in the beach and coastal areas. The ones that are going to take the longest are the large meeting and resort hotels. … I think people will initially avoid these larger 200-300-room hotels.”

If there’s no recurrence of the coronavirus in fall or winter, Reay said he would expect a steady increase of leisure travel through 2021, as more vacationers and business people take to the air.

Two lasting changes Reay expects: Hotels will look to “more robotic kinds of cleaning,” and travelers “are going to be very, very mindful of how close they get to other people.”

If your trip is about family, you might go sooner

Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, adviser to Airbnb and founder of the Modern Elder Academy, thinks “there will be a rolling process for when travel starts again based upon the intent and profile of the traveler.”

“Some kinds of experiences — weddings, family reunions, transformational travel — may snap back faster because it’s the promise of happiness and connection with people you know or will get to know deeply.”

As the recovery advances, Conley said, many travelers will head first to extended-stay hotels with kitchenettes (because of extended visits to family or pandemic-related recovery projects). He’s expecting a gradual resurgence of close-to-home visits on the periphery of major metro areas, followed by “summer leisure travel in nature, road-warrior business travelers, small conferences/meetings, international travel, major conventions, cruise vacations,” in that order.

IS THIS THE YEAR OF THE CAR?

Still, travel is in our DNA, Clayton Reid, chief executive of travel industry analyst MMGY Global, wrote in a March 27 report about the future of travel after the crisis.

Reid predicted Americans would return to travel by taking shorter, closer-to-home trips. “Road trips have been on the rise for five straight years, and 2020 could well become the year of the car.” Those early travelers probably will head to outdoor destinations, such as campgrounds and mountain resort towns.

WHEN WILL CRUISES RETURN?

While the entire travel industry has ground to a halt from the coronavirus pandemic, the cruise industry was hit especially hard as multiple ships were turned away from ports while passengers and crew fell ill and even died.

“COVID-19 has been a PR disaster for the cruise industry,” said Ben Cordwell, a travel and tourism analyst at GlobalData, a data and analytics company.

How does the cruise industry recover and regain its momentum?

“Since the cruise industry pivoted from passenger shipping to leisure cruising in the 1970s, cruise lines have not faced a full-scale halt of operations like they face today due to the coronavirus pandemic,” said Robert J. Kwortnik, an associate professor at Cornell University’s Hotel School, who studies tourism with a focus on the leisure cruise industry. “This situation truly is unprecedented, which means the response to it will have to be unprecedented as well.”

Even so, travel agents and industry experts say bookings for cruise sailings in 2021 are up considerably compared with precoronavirus data.

Cruise lines that canceled sailings in the last few months have offered refunds or credits toward future trips. Still, travel agents and experts say the booking rates for cruise trips in 2021 represent more than just passengers rebooking their canceled trips.

In the last 45 days, CruiseCompete.com, an online cruise marketplace, has seen a 40% increase in bookings for 2021 compared with 2019, said Heidi M. Allison, president of the company. Only 11% of the bookings are from people whose 2020 trips were canceled, she said.

“People are still booking cruises and are anxious to sail again when this is all over,” she said.

WHAT ABOUT LUXURY AND EUROPE?

Becky Powell, president of Protravel International, which has more than 1,000 travel agents in the U.S. and Britain, acknowledges the allure of close-to-home destinations.

“I think people are going to need their luxury resort fix before they are ready to board a plane,” she said in an email.

She also is seeing some people making reservations for luxury stays in Hawaii; Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; Tahiti, and some Caribbean sites.

Mark Anderson of Adventure Vacations in La Jolla, Calif., specializes in trips to Paris. He thinks European travel may rebound before the end of 2020.

“Fall would be my best bet,” he said in an email. “Could be as early as August, as the entire continent of Europe has the month (off), and nothing will stop them from heading to the beach.”

After the Sept. 11, 2001, crisis, Anderson offered trips to Paris for a bargain price of $399, including air, hotel and breakfast. They sold well for months.

“That taught me a number of lessons, among them that in the hierarchy of human needs, along with food, shelter, etc., that people need to travel,” Anderson said.