In the United States, McKinsey, a management consulting company, is organizing weekly online surveys of customers in order to measure their expectations and eagerness to spend across over 30 categories.
Change in consumer intent to spend on various categories
The organization has revealed insightful new data. In a survey between May 11 to 17 with 3000 customers, it was found that all travel categories – short-term home rentals, hotel/resort stays, adventure & tours, cruises, travel by car, domestic flights and international flights – are at the bottom of the list for “intent to spend” over the next two weeks. This is in stark contrast to respondents’ spending on those things before the COVID-19 crisis.
“You do see across all this data increased reticence for consumers to resume travel versus other day-to-day activities and versus spend on discretionary categories that were quite depressive at the beginning but is starting to come back,” says Tamara Charm, senior expert at McKinsey. Respondents have also shown that they intend to reduce in-person activities, such as domestic and international travel, compared to the amount of time they spent doing that before the crisis.
The survey is also studying whether consumers expect to make changes to their behaviors once the COVID-19 situation has subsided. They are attempting to to gauge what the new normal will look like. “Consumers are not great at telling us this with accuracy, but we wanted a sense of what they are thinking right now, and we do see international travel has one of the highest percentages of consumers saying they will decrease post-COVID relative to pre the crisis,” Charm says.
Also Read: Survey: Travelers Are Opting for Environment-Friendly Travel
