NEW YORK — While the Iran war caused an initial dip in the number of consumers interested in making travel plans, demand has returned to pre-conflict levels, Internova Travel Group executives said Tuesday.
Executives spoke at Internova's headquarters here during the company’s Focus on Destinations event, designed for destination marketing organizations and destination marketing companies.
A supplier partner asked if Internova had been experiencing an impact on bookings based on the war and other geopolitical events.
"I don't think we've seen that across the board as a company," said Brian Hegarty, vice president of marketing.
Hegarty said the company tracks not only booking data but leads coming through its Agent Profiler lead-generation system. It generates around 300,000 leads a year, and it's something Internova has been closely watching.
"We had about a week when things first happened in Iran that the lead data -- this is very front-end, of people looking to travel -- dipped," he said. "It went down maybe about 20%. Since then, it's come right back up."
As of last week, Hegarty said, Internova was seeing around the same demand level as it was the week before the war began. He acknowledged a shift in destinations, with people looking to avoid destinations near the conflict, but not in demand itself.
Stephen McGillivray, Internova's chief partner marketing officer, said he got a report from one of the world's biggest contemporary cruise lines last week that reflected a 20% increase in passengers from Internova year over year.
"We're not seeing the pullback from the retailers," he said.
While there are some pockets of dips, including Mexico following cartel-related upheaval there in February, McGillivray said overall demand is strong.
Hegarty agreed that some fun-and-sun destinations are experiencing softer sales at the moment, but outside of that, Internova hasn't seen a significant downturn minus that initial week when the Iran war first broke out.
"It's kind of come back right to normal," he said.
'Explosion' of growth
McGillivray also held a discussion with Internova CEO J.D. O'Hara at the event. One topic they discussed was Internova's growth.
Today, Internova sits at No. 10 on Travel Weekly's Power List with $6 billion in 2024 travel sales. In 2015, Internova, then known as Travel Leaders Group, recorded $4.32 billion in sales.
The "explosion of wealth" in the country is a factor in that growth, O'Hara said.
McGillivray had earlier shared a statistic from UBS, which found that some 50 million high-net-worth households, defined as households with $1 million or more in liquid assets, have emerged in the last two years. That means there are 2 million households each month turned millionaires, he said, and 40% reside in the U.S.
O'Hara also pointed to the pandemic as a factor in Internova's growth.
"I think Covid kind of put a lot of things into perspective, and you don't realize what you miss until it’s gone," he said, pointing to a preference to replace goods with experiences.
Younger generations are Internova's fastest-growing demographic, which he said had to do with a general desire to outsource tasks.
"I think, you know, when I was younger, having a car and a nice watch were kind of the things I aspired to," he said. "I think that's no longer the case with the next generation. They want experiences. They want to go places."