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Below is an excerpt from a complimentary research note by our Gaming, Lodging & Leisure analyst Todd Jordan. For more GLL research, check out Gaming, Lodging & Leisure Pro. |
After a big pop in flight searches that we highlighted in last week’s update, this past week (ended 3/19), showed some moderation but within an overall bullish and upward moving trend.
Globally speaking, the travel industry is not out of the woods quite yet given the geopolitical stress in Europe and the fallout resulting in higher gas and jet fuel prices (airline tickets, especially cross border is reflecting this).
However, the trends remain positive and with the warmer weather approaching and Covid trending mostly in the right direction for the West, the spring and summer should be positive catalysts for the leisure stocks.
Cross border and EU travel might underperform versus the trend just a month ago (pre-Ukraine invasion), but domestic leisure travel looks off to the races.
For context, the Kayak data for the US through 3/20/21 (last yr.), domestic flight search demand was ~-20% vs ’19 and Intl. search demand was -45%.
Through 3/19/22, domestic flight search demand was ~ -5% while international demand was ~ -25%, a marked improvement relative to prior year and relative to the beginning of the year during the heart of the Omicron wave.
We’ll keep closer tabs on this data and comment on it weekly given its high frequency nature and importance on the industry. Next week we’ll follow up with a more comprehensive update of our data demand trackers.
