Skift Travel Health Index

The Asia Pacific region, aided by the re-opening of China and the Lunar New Year is on the path to rapid recovery. While China gets ready to travel again, the global tourism industry needs to catch-up with the growing demand.

Although not fully recovered, the travel industry gained substantial momentum at the start of the year. All regions have almost recovered from the pandemic blues, Asia Pacific being the only exception. With loosening travel restrictions and China reopening, we expect a stronger travel industry to be less uneven this year.

Skift Research is cautiously optimistic about travel's continued recovery in 2023, despite a growing likelihood of a recession in many countries. Travel is still underindexed compared to the broader economy, and the reopening of Chinese borders provides a strong boost.

Economic worries might be catching up with the travel industry, but just in time China is starting to show signs of life.

The final push to full travel industry recovery seems more stubborn than initially thought. Continuing uncertainties and headwinds suppressed growth in October, with the Skift Travel Health Index sitting around the 85% mark since June with little movement.

Newly released data is highlighting the shift away from Asia as the epicenter of travel, moving towards the Middle East and Europe. With China looking at its zero-Covid policy as the long-term solution to beating the pandemic, it will be interesting to see how long it takes for the pendulum to swing back.

While not fully recovered, travel is taking on recognizable and predictable patterns in most regions. Asia Pacific is the exception, where there are still major fluctuations in travel performance with every new announcement of loosening and tightening of pandemic-related restrictions.

Asia Pacific still has the largest gap to pre-pandemic travel levels, but our back-of-the-envelope analysis shows that a return of Chinese travelers would pull many Asian countries back in the black. Now we just need to wait for the Chinese borders to reopen...

China is finally starting to recover, after months of decline amid renewed lockdowns. The overall Index dropped for the first time in 2022 though, as the mess at airports and airlines is catching up with the industry.

The "100 Club" now consists of seven members - seven countries where the travel industry performs at par or above 2019 levels. More will follow in the coming months.

The latest data and insights from our partners shows that the travel industry is continuing to return to 'traditional' levels of demand, and traveler behavior is looking increasingly like it did before the pandemic.

Poor travel performances in Russia and China, which did not come as a surprise, suppress an otherwise strong continuation of travel’s recovery in March 2022.