Early signs of domestic recovery in North American booking behaviours
Jun 10, 2020
10th June 2020: As we begin to see green shoots appear across a number of country’s booking behaviours, the US is a clear stand out and is set to enter its 7th consecutive week of week-on-week growth. These trends appear to be echoed across the water in Europe. Although off to a slower start, many of the major European countries have also experienced positive week-on-week growth in reservations for 3 consecutive weeks including Germany, France Switzerland, Italy and Spain.
With the levels of bookings increasing, we can also see a shifting in consumer behaviour towards more domestic travel, as reflected elsewhere in the industry. Overall, in CarTrawler we can see 74% of bookings made in the last 30 days were for domestic travel. This trend appears to be particularly strong in North America 94% of bookings made are for domestic pick up locations.
Other trends pointing us towards an apparent build in the strength of domestic travel is the split between rentals booked at airport and downtown locations. When we compare this year to last, we can see a 3-percentage point increase in downtown bookings as a portion of total bookings in FY20 Vs FY19.
These consumer trends help us to understand changes in the market to allow us to meet the needs of our partner’s customers. They also allow us to keep our focus on preparing to catch the recovery bounce and supporting the evolution of consumer needs.
