The State of the American Traveler

A personal reflection on the 1-year anniversary of Destination Analysts’ Coronavirus Travel Sentiment Index, by Erin Francis-Cummings, President & CEO.

Americans exhibit competing and complicated emotions around safety and travel—increasingly confident, dreaming and planning travel at pandemic record levels, as well as opening back up to urban destinations—but still largely leaning into pandemic measures and protocols.

Americans’ positivity towards travel reached more pandemic-era peaks as travel plans for even the next few months slowly but surely grow.

With new daily cases and COVID-related deaths down significantly from January peaks, Americans are exhibiting more capacity for positive thoughts and feelings, especially about their travel.

New records in American travel sentiment this week are sweet music to the travel industry in the march back to normalcy.

For the first time, optimism about the course the pandemic will take in the United States over the next month significantly outweighs pessimism.

In the Fall of 2020, Destination Analysts conducted a survey of over 240 DMO executives about change and disruption in the tourism industry, commissioned by and in partnership with BVK, as one part of their Destination Tailwind: A Strategy Series…

Less anxious and pessimistic about the pandemic, Americans still feel quite some distance from “normal” —particularly when it comes to travel.

Anxiety about the pandemic is as high as ever right now, but driven by optimism about vaccine timelines, Americans keep seeing the light at the end of the tunnel grow larger and closer.

As travel industry professionals, we are well aware that all facets of travel halted with the onset of COVID-19.