US | Green shoots of recovery emerge with vaccine rollout

The next stage of the US travel recovery has commenced. After a challenging fall and winter, signals are turning positive. Travel activity picked up in March, with spring break leisure travel a key contributor, and forward-looking booking activity has quickened, with gains in hotel bookings and air travel. The improvement represents the first substantive gains since the easing of lockdown protocols last year (May/June 2020).

What you will learn:

• Travel sentiment has been steadily increasing in lockstep with the expansion of the vaccine rollout.
• Improving health conditions, expanding vaccine distribution, and generous fiscal stimulus together support the trajectory of economic recovery, with our outlook for GDP growth in 2021 recently raised to 7%.
• Our current outlook is for travel spending in the US to recover to just 20% below 2019 levels this year.