Podcast: The Travel Industry’s 6 Under-Appreciated Storylines

Skift CEO Rafat Ali explains the underappreciated storylines from the last year that will continue to define the travel industry in 2022 and years to come. Listen now:

The storylines discussed in the podcast:

• Even amidst the variants waves, the United States, Latin America, and Dubai have clearly decided they will remain open. They have prioritized keeping their economies open over everything else, and that has all types of implications for years to come.
• Outdoor is now a permanent and premium part of the leisure and business travel industries.
• Basing a strategy on the return of Chinese travelers even post pandemic is foolhardy, as a China turns inwards and isolationist.
• Tour operators remain the most devastated sector in travel and will remain so in 2022. As an asset class for investors this sector will remain troubled, unless most pivot to independent, customized tours versus group fixed-date tours.
• Booking windows may have permanently shortened and financial products that introduce flexibility will help players stand out. Exciting as a sector and lot more innovation and investment to come.
• Even though labor issues have been covered a lot, there is a prevailing sentiment that this is transitory. But, this labor turnover, even amongst top tanks, will continue in 2022 and way beyond, with higher wages to come all across the board, new leadership in the industry to emerge and continued automation efforts to overcome these issues.