Travel expert James Ferrara of Inteletravel explains that despite flu and COVID rates increasing, a majority of Americans are set on traveling, and many will be doing so during the holiday season. He also offers some advice on less-popular travel destination and warns that yes, inflation is hitting your airfare and hotel costs.

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U.S. Holiday Travel Demand Is High – And so Are Prices

no Shannon for a lot of people. The holidays means you got to return back to your hometown. That's at least it's here for others. It's the perfect time for you to travel all over the world. So here to discuss this James ferrara, co founder and president of Intel. A travel James. Good to have you here. Thanks so much for getting up early with us this morning. So just how popular is travel with americans right now. I have to say after the pandemic guys and thank you for having me. The DNA of American travelers has changed. There is a new priority to travel. There's a mandate to travel that we're sensing out there in a recent study kind of proved it out, 70 Seven% Americans 75 said they were going to spend more on travel in 2023 than before. The pandemic. And this is my favorite. 40% of them said that nothing will stop them from taking a vacation. That means a lot they're going, they don't care. I'll say so since you said that, do you think that the rising uh we see a lot of flu people the highest it's been in a decade. Rsv and then covid rates as well. You think that all of those numbers rising will have any effect on these numbers. I don't think so. We don't think so minimal. We're heading into the winter season in the northeast. We're spending more time indoors of course and and they're just loose and colds around anyway. But I think that people have accepted the pandemic as an end Now register as part of our lives and we just don't see it affecting traveler behavior at all. Planes are flying 100% full man. If you don't have your seat you are sitting in the dreaded middle seat, there are no empty seats. I mean we did those see James, those that did travel especially over the busy thanksgiving holiday season. You know, delays, long lines summer, we saw delays, long lines. I mean should the holiday air travel travelers expect the same thing during the holidays as well. No, I mean the system is totally different now back earlier this year in the spring and early summer um really was a mess. We're calling it Armageddon. Right. But actually we're seeing about one third of the delays and cancelations that we saw at that time. All the planes are back in the air, the staffing is back up to where close to where it needs to be for a Airlines. Um you're you're just not going to see that except and here's my one caveat, you know, the system is not as fragile as it was six months ago, but weather is the bogey. Right? So if we have the combination of all of this traffic and we'll return to 2,019 levels if we have the combination of that and bad weather around the holidays then now, you know, I remember at the end of the summer prices went down, a lot of people were trying to capitalize on some of those fall flights, but right now inflation is high. So will travelers wallets be hit hard? Well certainly um, we'll all be hit by inflation. We all are being hit by inflation, but again, what we're not seeing it change traveler behavior. I can tell you that the prices in, in the travel industry are really, You know, outrageous in some sort of December airfare is up 40% over just last year and 47% over 2019. Hotel prices are up about 12%. Um, but it feels like a lot more than that frankly and Rental car rates and here's where you really see it up 48% from 2019. I mean it's incredible. And then we have the number of flights down about 15% from 2019. So you have really high demand, you have less inventory and this is True of car rentals as well, fewer cars in the system. And so the result, it's the classic formula is higher weights. This won't last forever, they will come back and normalize, I believe by the middle of 2023 we're going to be in much better shape, but for right now, even with those um prices, travelers are still filling cruise ships, filling hotels, filling planes and we don't see James really quickly with so much demand. Is there a destination you're recommending for travelers who maybe haven't booked their trip yet that maybe they should go now. Absolutely. First of all, I think we should all think of less discovered, less traveled destinations. It's better for the planet for us to spread the travel and the demand out a little bit right and not go to the same like 30 top destinations all the time. So for example, in Mexico, what's hot right now is to loom it might not be the first place think of, it's a big party destination, absolutely incredible beaches. Um, if you want to go to California, to wine country, go to Sonoma, not napa. If you want to go to europe, not Rome, but how about Sardinia or the island of Ischia? You know, Jamaica is hugely popular all the time and it is one of those top destinations. But there is, there are so many resorts, there all inclusive inventory there that there's lots of opportunity and to make it even right now, James, I'm willing to go to any of those locations. Just a trip is all I need. All right, thank you so much. James Pereira, president of the intel a travel and thanks for those insights, good stuff there