Travel advisors who have weathered the pandemic so far are slightly more optimistic about their ability to stay in business in the long term, results from a Travel Weekly poll indicate.
Nearly 30% of respondents to the poll, which surveyed about 1,000 advisers in late January, said they estimated they could stay in business for 12 months or more if business conditions continued as they were. That number was 24% when the same question was asked in a poll last July.
More than 72% of January poll respondents estimated they could stay in business for six months or more, up from 62% in July.
The availability of financial aid sources likely helped. In January's poll, more than 88% of respondents said they had received some form of funding, mostly via the 2020 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) or unemployment from their state. That number was up from nearly 72% in May.
One-quarter of respondents said they plan to apply for the latest round of PPP funds.
More than one-third of respondents already applied for the PPP fund and a quarter plan on applying for the new round.
Survey respondents were given the opportunity to comment on the state of the industry, and many voiced their frustrations: Slow, or no, travel sales; repeatedly booking and canceling clients' plans; ever-changing rules; a slow rollout of the vaccine; and the general devastation the pandemic has wrought on their businesses.
In particular, a number of respondents that said new regulations that require travelers to take a Covid-19 test before returning to the U.S., and a required post-trip quarantine period, were proving to be deterrents, and they were seeing cancellations as a result.
Many were concerned about the impact of current and future regulations on traveler confidence.
"Traveling will never be the same again," wrote Leatta Perdue of Travel Central Vacations in Metairie, La. "Finding travelers who are willing to book travel in the future and put that on the books is a challenge due to the fear of the unknown."
But Perdue, and others, indicated a readiness to take on that challenge.
One advisor said they believed demand would return once vaccines were widely distributed, and they encouraged airlines to keep booking processes relatively simple.
"The answer is to require proof of vaccinations, and I feel bookings will start coming with much force because [there will be] no need for additional quarantining before and after travel," the advisor wrote.
Jay Islam, CEO of Grand Travel and Cruise in Sugar Land, Texas, said he refused to leave "this amazingly resilient industry."
"I am confident my amazing clients will continue to support me to stay in business, so I can reap the benefit when travel does come back like [a] tsunami," Islam wrote.
Exactly when that tsunami will happen was a question on many advisors' minds. As another wrote, "The pandemic has made the travel consultant more important than ever. We are hearing from new clients who now realize that they shouldn't be booking on their own."
Lori Derauf, the owner of Vacation Designers in Waunakee, Wisc., said she believed better days were ahead.
"I feel like we are rounding the bend to better days," she wrote. "It's at the stage similar to when you take everything out of a closet. It looks worse before it gets better."