LONDON, Jan 24 — While everyone is impatient for the Omicron wave to end, this new episode of the Covid-19 pandemic hasn’t put a dent in future travel plans. From Australia to the United Kingdom and France, we’re already making plans to get back on the plane and we’re even feeling optimistic about long-haul trips!

While Thailand is working hard to optimise its chances of luring back tourists after the pandemic by rolling out fourth doses to residents in its popular travel regions, Spain is expecting tourism to recover by as early as spring, according to forecasts shared by Iberian authorities in the press.

And if these beloved tourist destinations are hitting the starting blocks, so are travellers! This was confirmed by a detailed report by online travel shopping platform Expedia. Based on a sample of 5,500 respondents in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, Canada and Mexico, the survey shows that more than eight out of ten travellers worldwide (81 per cent) are planning at least one vacation in the next six months with their family or friends. Likely feeling a need to make up for lost time, more than three quarters of respondents (78 per cent) say they plan to take several short trips. According to the survey, Australians are the most travel-starved: 31 per cent of them have plans for at least three getaways in the next six months.

British and French looking at long-haul flights

While airlines are working hard to maintain their airport slots and adapting their flight schedules to the gradual reopening of borders, some travellers are already thinking about getting back on the plane to fly to the other side of the world. That’s the case with British travellers who are the most likely to travel internationally in the next six months (48 per cent), along with the French (46 per cent), Canadians (43 per cent), Australians (40 per cent) and Germans (38 per cent). Beyond nationalities, this report shows us how eager the young generation is to discover or rediscover the world. Nearly half of millennials (49 per cent) and Gen Z (47 per cent) intend to book an international trip, and some have already done so! According to Expedia’s research, the international destinations that interest platform users the most at the moment are, in order, the Riviera Maya (Mexico), Rome (Italy), Bali (Indonesia), London (UK) and Paris (France).

This impatience to travel again doesn’t mean that people won’t be incorporating lessons from the pandemic into their future trips. The health crisis has had an impact on how travellers organised their voyages and has educated them to be more responsible. Fifty-nine per cent of tourists are ready to spend more in order to take a more sustainable vacation. Above all, 49 per cent say they now want to choose less popular destinations to avoid participating in overtourism. In the early days of the pandemic, anyone with a travel bug had to find out what was worthy of visiting closer to home, marking a new way of traveling that will not disappear according to Expedia, since 43 per cent of tourists intend to travel locally. — ETX Studio