9 Ways coronavirus will change the future of travel

At this very moment, there are no countries asking for a special visa or any particular documentation for passengers traveling internationally. But, since I wrote my first article, the movement towards what are now being called “immunity passports” has gathered pace. At first the WHO urged against them, but only because they felt that immunity had not yet been proven. However, as South Korea announced that cases of people having caught the Coronavirus twice were most likely false positives, and the scientific community agrees that the virus is not mutating too fast, it seems reasonable that people who have recovered from the virus will have immunity at least for some time.And, despite what the WHO are advising, several countries have taken steps to put into place some kind of immunity documentation.

This article in the Telegraph

calls these special passports “inevitable” and points to actions taken in Greece, Spain, and Chile to try and safely open up tourism.

This is the first prediction I can say with absolute confidence has come true. Or rather, is coming true. Several sources help me feel this assured.First, our own data at TravelPerk is telling us that. For example, we’ve seen that Germany as it eases lockdown measures is starting to travel again. The volume of travel across planes, cars, and trains, is only 5% of what it was in January, but that’s 2-3 times higher than the rest of Europe.

This prediction was around face masks and hand sanitizer. The sales of both are of course much higher than before the crisis. So reporting these numbers doesn’t really make my prediction true.Sanitizer sales are most likely not due exclusively to travel concerns. But face masks are a different story. News aggregators show that the following travel providers have mandated (or soon will) the usage of face masks:

OK, so if travel is more difficult and less predictable, then more people will book flexible-fare tickets, right? Well that’s what I thought, and certainly up until the end of March, that was spot on. The chart below shows the percentage of flights booked as flexible fares on the TravelPerk booking platform.

This was a prediction about a social stigma. That’s really hard to measure, so I won’t try. But, I will point to a

page on the CDC website

that lists travelers as a group likely to suffer from a negative social stigma due to the COVID crisis. Unfortunately, listed alongside those who have traveled are “people of Asian descent” and “healthcare workers”. Let’s all hope that being afraid of someone sneezing and coughing is as far as the discrimination goes, and those that are sick don’t travel.

If we concentrate our focus on the data coming out of Germany (where travel is recovering faster than in other countries), we see that trains are more important than ever before. Previous to the pandemic, our German travelers took around 0.5 trains for every 1 flight. Now they’re taking as many as eleven times more trains than planes.

It’s plain too early for this one. In my speculation, I pointed to a paper from Imperial College in London that suggested that lockdowns would be on and off. At the moment of writing, only the provinces of Sapporo in Japan and Shulan in China have had to re-enter a lockdown. For the moment, prices remain very low as providers try to get cash flowing into their business. If this crisis continues and a vaccine or treatment is further away than we all hope, then some will go out of business. It remains to be seen what effect this will have on prices.

So far, the only instance of an airline promoting an air filtration system that I’ve seen is an email from Wizz Air that went out to their existing customer base. There’s certainly not been mass advertising in the shape of social media ads or retargeting banners and alike. This may well be because it’s still too early to promote travel again, or because the airlines haven’t yet improved their fleets. New stories do reveal some interesting development though. First, ACA, a company that makes a “virus killing” cabin air purifier has

seen a rise in demand

. And second, airlines including

Qatar Airways

are at pains to let customers know that they are using HEPA air filtration systems. Meanwhile, the Google search data seems to suggest that they’ve had some success in getting the term “HEPA” into the public consciousness.

Unfortunately, there is not yet publicly available data on the length of airport queues. Trust me, I have checked. But maybe there will be soon. A company called iinside have started using their laser technology to measure distances between people at airports, as well as how long they are staying stationary. For the moment, this is only at select airports in the US, but it could prove to be a valuable tool in making the public feel safe. Something the travel industry really needs to do, and fortunately iinside’s CEO agrees with me.