Vacation Planning Is No Longer a Fantasy Exercise

If you found yourself Googling airfares or swiping through pictures of infinity pools on resort websites in the last year, there is a good chance it was little more than an act of digital escapism. Rather than making deliberate moves to plan a trip, perhaps you were just reminding yourself of the world beyond your living room, fantasizing about a future when the pandemic didn’t control so much of everyday life.

This homebound attitude is starting to change, though, and it appears many Americans are ready to go from voyeur to voyager. UBS has been routinely surveying U.S. consumers about their travel intentions since last April. In its latest installment, leisure industry analyst Robin Farley noted that the proportion of respondents saying they would travel now has reached its highest level yet. Notably, that group was larger for the first time than the group who said they would be comfortable traveling six months from now or more.