After five waves and almost two years of what seems like a bad remake of the movie Groundhog Day, there seems to be a light at the end of this pandemic tunnel.

As the Omicron variant is slowing down its spread somewhat, the travel and hospitality industry is getting ready for a 2022 that will hopefully mark a return to pre-pandemic levels.

However, it is important to note how different behaviors towards travel vary across different countries, as the response to Covid-19 and its variants proved widely uneven. For example, here in the province of Quebec, in Canada, we are still in lockdown and recently came out of a three-week curfew.

Meanwhile, various states South of the border and countries like Mexico or other Carribean islands are seemingly back to “normal” with little to no measures in place to prevent or contain the virus.

With this in mind, the folks at Expedia Group just released their most recent Traveler Value Index, with an outlook for 2022. Travel marketers should bear in mind these important considerations in order to apply best practices and reach their business objectives accordingly. Here are my top 5 findings from this report.

1. PEOPLE WILL INVEST MORE IN TRAVEL THAN PRE-COVID-19

Not too surprisingly, Expedia found that across the eight countries surveyed there was a keen intention to splurge and spend more on travel, with the exception of Japan. Call this Revenge Travel 2.0, if you may!

Breakdown of how much travelers are planning to spend in the 8 countries surveyed by Expedia.

Source: Traveler Value Index, 2022.

In fact, more than 54% of travelers surveyed said they intend to spend MORE on trips than they did prior to the pandemic. This echoes what we were already seeing earlier in 2021, as people feel they were “robbed” of quality time during lockdowns and various measures put in place to contain the spread of the virus. Thus the expression revenge travel, whereby people now want to travel more often, and spend more on every trip!

2. LOYALTY POINTS TO THE RESCUE

Many of us weren’t able to spend on travel during the past two years. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t spend our money elsewhere… piling up loyalty points along the way!

Now two out of every traveler (or about 40%) intends to use these hard-earned points at least in part to pay for those expensive travel plans, domestic or abroad.

Generational breakdown of loyalty points that can be used for travel.

Source: Traveler Value Index, 2022

And it’s the younger travelers that are most likely to use their loyalty points against travel rewards, as we can see from the generational breakdown in the chart above. Is your marketing taking this aspect into consideration?

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Frederic Gonzalo: Speaker and consultant with over 25 years of experience in travel marketing, sales and communications. Since 2012, I provide strategic planning consulting, website audits as well as digital marketing coaching for all levels of organizations, from SMB to large travel organizations.