Recovery Connections: Customer Insights for the New Year

During a Recovery Connections session on Dec. 16 — part of HSMAI’s Road to Recovery 2020 program — Google’s Raymond Mok shared “Customer Insights for the New Year.” Here is a key takeaway from his presentation:

Travelers will stay close to home: “Vacation rentals are seeing positive growth while hotel and car rentals are recovering but down, then followed by flights, tours, and cruises, which are lagging,” said Mok, principal industry analyst for Google. “We’re in a world where work from home or work from anywhere is possible. We see consumers asking ‘can I travel’ or ‘safe to fly’ at eight times and five times as much as last year. However, we know some consumers are traveling. Nearly half of consumers said their first trip post-pandemic will be within 100 miles of their home and 65 percent will continue to substitute short-distance flights with car travel. Google searches show 100-percent growth for beaches and staycations and an even stronger, 200-percent growth for RV rentals and racks for cars, emphasizing the short-term trend of staycation and road trips and a boom for leisure markets.”

Recovery Connections is a weekly program with sales, marketing, and revenue optimization tracks that mix best-practices presentations with interactive small-group discussions. Sign up to watch past sessions, access an on-demand library — and register for future sessions in 2021.


Categories: Marketing
Insight Type: Articles