The Travel Business Is Picking Up
Les Américains prennent des vacances.
Les frontières des États-Unis resteront fermées cet été, tout comme celles de l’Europe. Cette année, les Américains goûtent donc, non sans prudence, au plaisir de vacances dans leur propre pays. Un gain tangible pour le secteur du tourisme, dont l’optimisme reste pourtant modéré...
The nation’s largest airlines are preparing for a limited rebound next month as more Americans book vacations in places like Florida and the mountains and national parks in the West. Some in the industry said the recovery was already underway.
2. “California and Texas and New York and New Jersey are the top four markets, all before Florida,” said Goldfarb, president at Fontainebleau Development, which owns hotels and other properties. “People are getting in planes and social distancing but coming here.”
3. After cratering in April, the number of travelers and airport employees filtering through the airport checkpoints has steadily climbed in recent weeks. The low point arrived on April 14, when it screened fewer than 90,000 people, just 4% of those screened the same date last year.
4. “We’re seeing a slow but steady rise in domestic demand,” Vasu Raja, American
Airlines' senior vice president of network strategy, said in a statement. “After a careful review of data, we’ve built a July schedule to match.”
WHERE WILL THE AMERICANS GO?
5. Montana is among the states that stand to benefit from the expanded service, with American planning to nearly double the daily flights there in July. Some of those will arrive at Glacier Park International Airport, just outside Glacier National Park and a short drive from Great Northern Resort, which includes a 14-room hotel and five cabins.
6. The resort fielded cancellation calls for months as the pandemic spread, but things started to look up after the national park announced that it would begin reopening, said Catherine Beers, who owns the resort with several members of her family.
7. In May, the resort is typically about half full, Beers said, but this year it hosted only two couples all month, both locals. Since then, the cancellation calls have subsided, and the hotel is about 80% booked for July and August, months when it usually has no vacancies.
8. But the airline industry’s reckoning is far from over. Industry executives and analysts generally agree that it is likely to be several years before airlines fly as many people as they did before the pandemic. Airlines are still losing tens of millions of dollars every day. That number is shrinking, but the losses are expected to continue through the end of the year. Generally, a flight needs to be about three-fourths full for an airline to turn a profit, but most are far from it because airlines can’t or won’t fill up planes.
“People are getting in planes and social distancing but coming here.”