Consumers couldn’t get enough of buying things for their homes and to wear around those homes during the worst of the pandemic years but when things began to ease up, they headed straight out the door for vacations, travel, entertainment venues and restaurants.
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Now it appears that surge has peaked and as one travel industry veteran put it, “We’re shifting back to normal.” Bloomberg, the news service, recently wrote “The great post-pandemic boom in consumer travel is officially over. With the U.S. economy showing signs of slowing and the financial cushions many accumulated during the Covid-19 pandemic wearing thin, travelers are reining in their post-lockdown wanderlust and tightening their belts.”
This could all be good news for apparel and home producers and sellers who have largely been shut out of those bigger disposable incomes that have come with higher wages and near-full employment. The downside of course is that wages are no longer on the rise and there are signs that the job market may be slowing down.
“I think the post-pandemic travel behaviors are over, where people were taking longer trips,” said Nicholas Jones, analyst at Citizens JMP Securities LLC, told Bloomberg. “The pent-up demand for travel has abated. We’re shifting back to normal prepandemic travel patterns.” According to Embark Beyond, a travel service for big spenders, the average trip length is down 14 percent year-over-year, now averaging 6.2 days rather than 7.8.
Bottom of Form“Travel has been the pocket where things have been most resilient,” said Michael Erstad, leisure travel analyst at equity research firm M Science told Bloomberg. “This is the first time we are starting to hear some rumblings of that robustness not being there.”
However, the spending pie is being split up going forward it seems some larger slices are likely to be served up to the fashion and home sectors.