Ongoing uncertainties and headwinds hampered growth in October, with the Skift Travel Health Index hovering around 85% with little movement from June.
Skift Research has tracked the performance of major travel industries in 22 countries since the start of the pandemic in the Skift Travel Health Index. We've seen steady progress, but the final push for a full recovery seems more stubborn than we thought.
While talk of strong demand continued at the Skift Aviation Forum this week, the latest index report shows there is enough uncertainty and headwinds to hold growth in the overall travel industry. The index has been hovering around 85% since June, without breaking the metaphorical ceiling.
In October, the average global Skift Travel Health Index score dropped to 84 percent from October 2019. Despite the decrease between months, it is still 19% higher than a year ago.
Performance of the aviation sector
The index is made up of more than 80 indicators provided by 20 data partners and drawn from public sources, which allows us to break down the top and bottom indicators to provide more insight into sector performance. We take a quick look at the performance of the aviation sector and a discussion of other sectors is also available in our latest report.
The Asia-Pacific region is experiencing weakness across all levels of the travel experience, with research and real-world performance (including seat capacity, load conditions and passenger volume data) in the middle of pre-pandemic levels. Bookings for future flights are also low, at just 30% of 2019 levels, suggesting that weakness will continue into the future.
North American bookings are down 1% from 2019 and October's current performance is down 93%, indicating strong momentum going forward.
When we separate the indicators between domestic and international performance, we see that global performance is comparable to domestic performance in North America, the Middle East and Africa. In Europe and Latin America, global performance is better than local performance. The black sheep is the Asia-Pacific, where global performance is suffering due to China's ever-closing borders.
This perception is confirmed by flight data from the long-haul region of Cirium. US flight strength is in stark contrast to international flights in the Pacific Ocean and Asia Pacific.
Additional information can be found in our October 2022 Highlights Report and Skift Travel Health Panel.