If you’re looking for the same old bad news, don’t look at leisure travel, which appears to be the key comeback story of 2022 and is creating the foundation for a good perspective for 2023.
According to Jeni Mundy, Senior Vice President, Merchant Sales and Acquiring at Visa Global, there is a “air of optimism” around leisure travel.
She said, “We can tell you that cross-border travel-related spend is 16 percentage points more than it was.” when comparing 2018 and 2019.
International arrivals in 2022 “are well on their way to reaching 850-900 million by the end of the year, accounting for 75-80 percent of the 2019 levels,” according to Visa’s Special Report: Global Travel Insight Q3-2022 published in November. This was a welcome break from the consumer spending slowdowns brought on by inflation in 2022.
Even though the number of people traveling hasn’t entirely returned two months later, Mundy said that “from a spend standpoint, we are already recovered.”
What we did see, according to Mundy, was that leisure travelers were taking the lead and that leisure was recovering far more swiftly than business. These leisure travelers also spent more money at the stores in addition to more money on their travel and accommodations.
Due to pent-up desire and the excitement of doing something that was illegal for such a long period, she predicted that there will be a significant demand for travel experiences starting in 2022 and maybe continuing into 2023.
