Phocuswright: 2018 another year of solid gains for the US travel industry

14 January, 2019

Global research travel company Phocuswright believes the US travel market should grow by a healthy 5% year-on-year in 2018, but those gains will start to slowly decline after 2019.

The company projected that momentum in the US travel industry should continue in 2019 before declining slowly through 2022. "By then, total gross bookings will have increased to USD441 billion," says Phoscuswright.

Consumer confidence remained robust during 2018, and Phocuswright concludes that US airlines saw a jump of nearly 5% in passenger enplanements in the first half of 2018 while hotels posted record breaking performance in the first two quarters of the year.

But economic and travel results were more mixed during second half of 2018. "A volatile stock market to end the year in negative territory, the ongoing US-China trade war, and a sputtering global economy have many travel executives fearing a looming economic slowdown," Phocuswright states "But for now, the travel industry is enjoying another year of solid gains."

Online travel growth in the US continues to outpace the overall market, according to Phocuswright research, and that trend should continue until at least 2022. Even as supplier websites are interestingly projected to grow somewhat faster than online travel agencies (OTAs) in 2018, the overall online balance between suppliers and intermediaries will remain unchanged through 2022.