How travel has changed, 2023 vs 2021 vs 2019
I travel a lot, and have done so for decades (100-200k miles/yr, and 100+ nights/yr in hotels). I tend to go for the middle/high end of corporate stuff for both personal and vacation travel, using price/points/etc. hacks to get the cost down (and having flexibility on dates, routing, and destination to make it work).
I’ve noticed (as have everyone) a bunch of changes in how the travel industry works, basically 2019 (the big pre-Covid year) and throughout the Covid period and today. Some good, many bad. A lot of these changes weren’t really even directly due to Covid or Covid response, but things the industry wanted to do anyway.
First, staffing levels are way down, both in terms of people and experience. Maybe this is due to the employment market being hot, maybe it’s because people left the hospitality industry and found other careers, but this is especially noticeable in hotels for things like housekeeping, staffing levels at ancillary functions, etc. To some degree, automation has taken the place of employees, but mostly reduced service standards have taken over. Medium-high level full service corporate properties (Sheraton, Marriott, Westin, etc.) seem to be the most affected, although low-end full service are also affected. To a great degree, limited-service hotels are the winner here — if I’m going to be in a hotel without room service, without daily housekeeping, etc., it might as well be one where I get a full kitchen, cleaning supplies, extra towels, and no hassles with ordering in food from delivery services, with leftovers or groceries in the refrigerator. This doesn’t seem likely to change.
This has affected airlines (reduced ramp staff → continued increase in baggage fees and increased baggage irregularities; fewer humans for checkin → more checkin automated kiosks), but it’s less obvious most of the time. It has affected service delivery when flight attendants and pilots (and to some degree maintenance workers) are unavailable, both in reducing flight schedules and in irregular operations.
Second, airlines have become much more flexible with cancellation policies. While usually cancellations become credits rather than refunded to payment instrument, they still are much more flexible than they were pre-covid, especially for people without elite status.
Next, “elite” customers of frequent flyer and guest programs (airlines and hotels, especially) have swollen in ranks. In 2020-2022, requalification requirements were waived or dramatically reduced, so it was easy for people to retain pre-existing status. With as few as 9 hotel stays in 2021, someone could become a top-tier Hyatt elite with zero previous relationship. Combined with low utilization in 2020 (especially) and 2021 (especially for International), it was easier to get upgrades, although usually of an inferior or service-reduced product. In 2022, this turned into massive crowding at airports, lounges, and other places where elites got special handling, as there were so many of them, combined with a surge in pent-up travel demand (at least for recreational vs. business travel). In 2023, a lot of the “surplus elites” are being culled, so maybe things will start to return to “normal” in 2023 and 2024.
Finally, there does seem to be a long-term shift in both increased use of technology/remote communications tools for especially internal company meetings, but also for many forms of external business activity. Conferences do seem to come back in 2022 and especially 2023 (although the organizers of conferences are having a hard time actually executing, as many of the experienced event staff took off), but a lot of outside sales have become inside sales, and a lot of repeated corporate internal events are zoom calls. There’s a larger amount of recreational vs. business travel, and of that recreational travel, more is in paid business/first airline seats (vs. previously “tourist/coach class” and business/first for business), although I think the kind of mid-upper corporate non-luxury hotels are still more popular with business or internal-to-industry travel than with holiday guests (few people intentionally stay at an airport Westin rather than either a boutique high-end downtown property or “whatever is cheapest on Priceline” when traveling on vacation).
I still do plenty of conference trips + incidental vacation during the trip, as well as meeting people at companies I’ve invested in or work with, and still try to avoid forced last-minute travel to unpleasant or uninteresting places for any reason, but as a whole, the industry has changed a fair bit.