Wouter Geerts

The "100 Club" now consists of seven members — seven countries where the travel industry performs at par or above 2019 levels. Another four countries are following closely behind. Things are starting to look almost "normal."

Understanding the customer is becoming increasingly important to hoteliers, and so-called CRM systems can help capture guest data and automate interactions to improve guest conversion and retention. For now, however, CRM remains a tool mainly used by larger hotels.

The latest data and insights from our partners show that the travel industry is continuing to return to "traditional" levels of demand, and traveler behavior is looking increasingly like it did before the pandemic.

While the travel industry was on its knees, travel loyalty programs continued to grow. But the pandemic has changed the travel industry, and loyalty programs need to follow suit.

Poor travel performances in Russia and China, which did not come as a surprise, suppress an otherwise strong continuation of travel’s recovery in March 2022 that finally saw Japan make some gains, according to our Skift Travel Health Index.

The travel industry registered one of its strongest months of recovery since the inception of our index, with performance up across all sectors and almost all countries. The war in Ukraine, however, is casting a long shadow over travel's performance moving into March.

Our improved Travel Health Index shows that pricing rules across all travel sectors. Inflated rates pulled up overall performance, but Omicron impacted new bookings coming in during January.

Last year wasn't the runaway success the travel industry anticipated — or needed.

We could have filled a multi-volume encyclopedia with everything that has happened in the past 12 months. Instead, we settled for 12 telling charts.

Sophisticated revenue management systems will undoubtedly become more commonplace in the hotel industry, but today still only a small minority of hotels use them. There is a lot of room left for growth, innovation, and disruption.