Over the last twelve months, Tripadvisor has tracked the planning and booking behaviors of travelers all over the world.

Our previous research explored the impact of the early stages of the pandemic on travel demand, examined emerging traveler trends over the course of 2020, and offered five predictions for travelers trends we expected to see in 2021.

As the peak leisure travel season approaches, questions about how quickly the global travel and tourism sector will recover still remain. While in some parts of the world - like the United States - demand is rebounding, in others the picture is more uncertain. How confident are travelers feeling about booking a trip, either domestically or internationally? How big an influence is the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations having on customer demand for travel? How soon will demand for international vacations return, and what will that mean for domestic tourism in the meantime?

The latest in our series of research reports will attempt to help answer all of these important questions by providing unique insights into the type of vacations travelers around the world are considering, when they intend to travel and their attitudes towards both domestic and international leisure travel in 2021.

To do this, we have analyzed first party forward-looking market data based on first party click and search behaviors on Tripadvisor, as well as the very latest sentiment data gathered from traveler surveys in six major markets around the world (the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, Japan and Singapore).

Our research highlights:

• Overall search trends in the accommodation, dining and experiences sectors
• The influence of the vaccination rollout on consumers’ travel planning and booking habits
• Travelers’ plans for their next big trip - whether domestic or international

The Big Picture

At the start of the year, our research found some encouraging signs that travelers globally were not only more confident that they would be able to travel further afield in 2021 than they did in 2020, but that their determination to do so was growing stronger too.

With summer now approaching, we surveyed more than 2,400 consumers across six major markets to see how these trends were developing, and whether increasing confidence - if still evident - was translating into tangible travel planning and booking behaviors.

The resilience of consumers’ attitudes to travel has been a recurring theme in much of our research over the last twelve months, and we found evidence of it again in our latest consumer sentiment analysis. When asked to describe their attitude to travel in 2021 compared to their attitudes before the pandemic, around a third of those surveyed globally (30%) reported feeling “more determined than ever to travel this year” with a further thirty-seven percent (37%) agreeing with the statement: “I want to travel as much as I did before”. The remaining thirty-three percent (33%) of respondents said they are “more cautious about traveling this year”.

However, this global picture only tells part of the story, because between markets there were some stark differences in consumer attitudes. Respondents in the U.S. are the most determined to travel - nearly half (45%) reported feeling that way - while at the other end of the spectrum, half (50%) of travelers in Japan are “more cautious about traveling this year”.

Click here to read the full report