A Look at Travel Habits of More Active Travelers During Pandemic

Travel has started to rebound in recent weeks. People are flying more as the pandemic gets somewhat under control. In fact last Friday was the best day for air travel since early March. A total of 968,673 people passed through TSA checkpoints in the country. That’s more than an eleven fold increase since the worse day back in April 14 when the TSA counted only 87,534 people. But when compared with last year’s numbers, air travel was still 56% down from the same Friday in 2019 when 2,198,828 people traveled.

Now AwardWallet has also decided to publish some internal data on how COVID-19 has impacted travel plans for AwardWallet members. While this pool of people might not be representative of the population of the United States, it should be better aligned with readers of this site who are probably more active travelers than the average person.

The data looks at the average number or reservations per 1,000 users for air travel, hotel stays and car rentals. Numbers for September are lower, since we are only through a third of the month, but should see an increase compared to previous months. It is interesting to see that the lowest

Air trips booked per 1,000 users each month.

Hotel stays booked per 1,000 users each month.

It is interesting to see that air travel hit the lowest point in May, while travel in general was at its worst in mid April. Hotel stays and car rentals booked by AwardWallet members are more aligned with general trends.

Car rentals booked per 1,000 users each month.

Before the pandemic the numbers show that AwardWallet members were flying and staying at hotels more than once per month on average. There was a 75-80% drop once the pandemic hit, which is a better than the general population. Looks like hotel stays were down more than air travel or car rentals booked.

Below you can find more data broken down by air carrier, hotel chain and car rental company.

Let me know in the comments how your travel has changed this year and whether you are still going about business as usual, flying less or have given up completely for now. Also vote below: