Has Covid made the way you plan holidays differently?
According to a recent report travel agents had reported a strong recovery in business travel, with domestic bookings up 74 per cent on the lows of 2021.
However, international travel has seen the strongest return, with airfare sales up 404 per cent, and 16 per cent of all new enquiries to travel agents coming from people who had not used one in the two years before the pandemic.
Apparently it is concerns that COVID-19 restrictions could re-emerge that are behind a major change to the way people plan their trips.
People used to book about 120 days, up to 170 days for international travel by Australians prior to their trip. That’s now very rarely longer than 30 days.
Usually for short trips into South-East Asia, or domestic, there is now a 7-14-day booking window and that’s the shortest it’s probably been in the last 30 or 40 years.
Cruise ships have returned to Australia and bookings are open but it remains to be seen if people will re-embrace cruising. I just read that a newly built cruise liner is going straight from the builders to a wreckers because no one wants it.
Have you changed the way you book your holidays because of Covid?
Not because of covid but because of age ,cost and difficulty .
At the moment there is mayhem at the airports with lack of staff and it’s all too tiring and unpleasant .
Had to cancel last years holiday because of covid,we wee going to do a river cruise through Europe. the company offfered a good deal if we booked with them again, so now shortly going back to Norway on to Faroe Isles then on to Iceland instead.
Hence doing the daily walk to get fit enough
We are not traveling abroad till Sept/Oct, maybe. And will not book till last minute. But there’s nothing new there: it’s our favourite time for a summer holiday, and we always book last minute.
That’s interesting, personally I always used to keep an eye out for specials, saved heaps that way but I doubt that applies now. I am talking about airfares only I have never been on an organised holiday apart from one cruise
We’re going to Portugal, will check BA and TAP, book not necessarily the cheapest but most convenient flight times. Sort out everything else when we are there, stay with Mrs d00d’s family for the first & last couple of days, a short taxi ride from Lisbon aeroporto. May take a hired car to Oporto and/or Algarve.
Yep, sorry, I forget that European international flights are like flying from Sydney to Melbourne or Broken Hill, there probably isn’t that much difference in fares anyway over that sort of distance, it’s just the equivalent of our east coast domestic flights
Flights to SE Asia like Malaysia or Thailand take me 8 hours with the first 5 hours spent flying over Australia. Even flights to Bali (probably our nearest equivalent to the Costa del Sol or the south of France) take 6 hours.
We aren’t going abroad for the forseeable future, not because of what’s happening at airports or cost, for the simple reason I don’t want to go so far and leave my Dad, UK and I can get back quickly not so easy abroad, I would worry the whole time abroad so it’s not worth the worry. Anyway, I hate flying lol
Heathrow to Lisbon is a two hour flight, nice to have breakfast in London, lunch in Lisbon. We go cattle class, no food or booze. I once did Sydney to Brisbane: about the same I think.
