Cardlytics, a platform that analyzes both online and in-store purchases
from more than 140 million bank customers in the United States, says it is
seeing signs of recovery in most sectors of travel.
Its most recent dataset, based on spending through June 17, shows
consumers have been spending more in recent weeks as states reopen.
While spending through travel aggregators and agencies bottomed out the
first week of April at -93% as compared to that period in 2019, for the week
beginning June 11 spending was only down 68% year-over-year.
Similarly, spending directly with airlines, which was down 93%
year-over-year the first week of April, has edged up to -69% between June 11
and 17.
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Lodging is also showing improvement – most recently down 40% compared to
the same period in June 2019, which is up from a low of -86% year-over-year in
April. Cardlytics says most of that spending has been going to alternative
lodging and homestay companies such as Airbnb.
“As we know,
COVID-19 has changed consumer behavior. Across the board, disruptors are
rapidly gaining a foothold over their traditional counterparts. We’ve seen the
shift in spend toward e-commerce retailers, online grocery, third-party
restaurant delivery and now, alternative lodging,” says Sasha Trifunac, vice
president of travel and entertainment partnerships at Cardlytics.
“By Memorial [Day] weekend, alternative lodging was already back to
pre-COVID growth in spend and by mid-Jun had accelerated to +28%
year-over-year. In comparison, traditional hotel brand remained
down -64% year-over-year. Because alternative lodging is typically paid for in
advance while traditional hotels are paid upon checkout, some of the
differential is an early indicator of upcoming travel spend.
"However, the
dramatic recovery of alternative lodging has far outpaced for many weeks the
much slower recovery in traditional hotel spend and seems to indicate an
accelerated adoption of vacation rental disruptors.”
Cardlytics data indicates car rental recovery has stalled at around -40%
year-over-year since the end of May, but that is up from a bottom of -73.8% in
April.
The only sector not showing signs of recovery is cruise, which has been
down more than 80% year-over-year since mid-March and remains there now in
June.
Cardlytics
says its system has insight into one out of every two card swipes in the U.S.,
equating to more than $3 trillion in annual spend.