Let's Talk: Travel Trends 2021 🚀

Welcome, everybody, to a very special episode of the Boostly podcast. We're in episode 199. We're one away from 200. And in this live episode of the Boostly podcast, we're gonna be talking about travel trends 2021.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee? Cause it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf Making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you better put direct.

Mmm.

Here are the words in the pod. That's what comes next.

First and foremost, we've got two fantastic guests with us this evening. We're going to start with Joseph and then we're going to go on to DeBolt. So, Joseph, if you could just please, the floor is yours. Just introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit more about Guesty, please.

Thank you very, very much, Mark, for the introduction. My name is Joseph Weinstock. I'm director of sales of Americas at Guesty. Guesty is a leading property management software. We're global in 80 countries around the world. And I'm very, very happy to be here today to discuss Travel Trends for 2021 and provide guesties insight.

All right, so my name is Thibault Masson. I am French. Obviously you can hear it. I am a property owner of two holiday rentals in St. Barts in the Caribbean and one in Bali. So I've been doing this for quite some years. And also I publish rentals scale up. Rentalscale.com is a website that's all about, you know, industry trends, what's going on and actionable actions. Actionable actions. Well, actionable insights. I really, really, you know, as an owner myself, I really care about giving insights but making sure people could then say, okay, so what, what do I do? I think that's Mark, something you really love and be doing tonight. And so there's a free newsletter. People can just subscribe to the newsletter rentalscape.com newsletter. And every week we send out the trends. What's going on, what's new either for direct bookings, also on the big bad OTAs, because in the past I may have worked with one of those OTAs, so I knew quite a few things as well about how they work inside. It's always good to be this perspective, I think, to. To people interested in what's on the mind of these big bad OTAs.

Yeah. So still on UK stats, so we're deep diving into the different months in the summer so we're looking at, for example July 2021 at a 14% more reservation volume compared to July 2020. For August we're seeing 53% more reservation volume compared to August 2020. So we're seeing a pattern that reservations are building up. There is this pent up demand and we think that as we get closer to summer months, that volume may increase. Of course.

Yeah, I think these are great numbers and obviously I guess you guys get the data because you see all this data pouring in from property managers. Right. Looking in the uk. So this is where data comes from. What I always love is seeing like data from property managers. That's fantastic. I think what's important here as well when I hear this and also for anyone who's not in UK as well, is to understand that it's when, when the British Prime Minister talked on February 22, it generated like a spike in traffic on websites of property managers. Right. I think Sykes Holiday Cottages shared that they had like 200% boom in traffic and 400% boom in bookings that evening. People have been lurking, looking for, but they were not booking. And then it was certain traffic. But for people who, you know, who live in countries where there's not been any, where there's still very strong travel restrictions, no clear deadlines, it does mean people are looking right now. Right. And so I would say it's a sure sign that they're waiting for a signal. And when that signal comes, you see a boom. And the other thing I would like to talk about as well is that again, even within the uk, when there was this boom of bookings, it was again, if you're not in the uk, it was a British Prime Minister talking, but he was really talking about England and Cornwall in terms of the plan. So that's where I was looking at different maps. And there's a company called Transparent that does like maps, uses data, it's free. Go and see what they do. Sea transparent.com I think.

Yeah.

And you look at maps and like Scotland, Northern Ireland, nothing. Because if you're not in uk, basically it means that the plan was not, was only for England and Cornwall. Basically. I think even, not even Wales was there, I think. So you had a lot of bookings in certain areas. So suddenly also what's very interesting, all this, you see these borders reappearing and if you look like this map in Europe, same thing like France is actually doing pretty okay at the moment because we have a strong domestic market in France. In the us, California is not doing well. Florida is Crazy. Well, it's always crazy in Florida, but it's booming. So what's very interesting as well to me is that there was a boom, but certainly more in rural areas in places where people knew would be open a certain date. So it does mean that for example, in cities like London things were not so great. So I don't know how many people here, maybe they can say in the comments are actually own properties in cities, but it's a tough one. And Mark, I would like to react to what you said as well is that, yeah, I agree that if you have a property, a cottage on the coast for example in uk, but same thing in France and Brittany for example, or other areas. Yeah. I mean, why discount discounts. Right.

I liken it to a horse race specifically like the grand national and I don't know if you've ever tuned into the grand national, but it's a big horse racing and what happens beforehand, the horses are just going in circles, just basically waiting for somebody to set off the starter gun and the horses are going in circles. The riders are getting ready, they're all getting jockeyed into position and that is basically what your guests are doing right now. So going in circles, they know they're just waiting for, waiting for that starter gun. And for a lot of people that start a gun was like to bolt said it was the, the, the Boris Johnson going up and setting out a road map. That roadmap had clear dates and people had the confidence. I think a big thing that will stay the same. I know we're talking about compared to 2019, but if you look at what will stay consistent with 2020 and now is that the staycation. If you look at last year and you can look at your own reports from last year, from what bookings you had, most people were driving maybe one to three hours. You know, you in mainland Europe you could get people that can jump in their car in Germany and, and drive down. But what you will find is that that trend from last year isn't going to go anywhere fast. Especially with countries or even municipals. You know, here in Spain we've got instead of counties are called municipals or states. They you can change their mind really, really, really quickly. Like us in April, we are going away for three days. We are driving 90 minutes for a staycation. We are 90 minutes. That is literally how far we are. We are driving to go away for a few days and there's another trip we're going to do when we're driving 35 minutes down the coast. So it's literally that's how far that we are traveling, but that is. That is how much we want to get out.

The first Persona that we're talking about are travelers that are looking to reunite with. With friends and family. We're looking at another Persona that is basically revenge travel, right? The future surge in travel due to the cabin fever that has caused because of the pandemic. And also some travelers are just looking at it, obviously a change of scenery. Some travelers would decide to travel, of course, for business reasons, but much less. But we're also seeing these change of patterns also in terms of the traveler and the traveler and the traveler Persona, which is very, very interesting. And also based on that, you can make the necessary changes or updates if it's to the listing, if it's to know the advertising strategy and so on.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee? Cause it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf Making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.