Key summary points from the wrap-up session:

1. The economy is not in a depression, just a recession
- The current environment is bad and the next months will be bad, possibly worse
- In the last quarter, quarterly consumer spending fell for the first time since 1991
- Things should get better 2nd half of 09

2. Consumers are pessimistic
- Consumers are “on pause”
- Everybody is waiting for the financial markets to calm down
- Hope is that after the election consumer confidence will start picking up

3. Leisure travel proves resilient to the downturn
- But: shorter trips, closer to home
- Consumers spend less; value and deals really important
- Many consumers are open-minded about where to travel, they just want a deal

4. Business travel is the weakest link
- 35% of trips are for company internal reasons
- 81% think that technology can replace travel

5. Airline industry has a huge problem
- 72% of US travelers said they decided not to took at least one trip less last year because of air travel being such a hassle
- These not taken trips cost the travel industry 26 billion in lost revenue.

6. Hotels begin to feel the impact
- While rates are still holding up, occupancy levels have started to fall
- Markets that have new rooms come online and a reduction in air service are facing difficult times
- Markets impacted most are Las Vegas, Phoenix, Nashville, Detroit

7. Look at new market opportunities
- Latinos (spend 60 billion in the US on travel in 2007)
- Millennials (now 18-28)

8. Chicken come home to roost
- Negative short-term outlook for travel from Europe and the rest of the world to the US

9. NextGenTraveler is defined more by attitude toward and use of technology than demogaphics
- NextGen travelers represent 26% of travel spend
- Travelers that read online reviews spend 85% more on travel than those who write online reviews
- People who are on MySpace spend less on travel than those who are not
- People on LinkedIn spend 50% more on travel than those who are not
- 37% of travelers are influenced by personal comments / reviews on social networking sites

10. Need to take a long view with regards to sustainable travel
- The push for green travel seems to loose momentum as few consumers are willing to pay more for greener products

I will try and post some summaries for some of the individual sessions. There were some really interesting insights on social media as well as green travel. Follow me on Twitter to get the updates.

Thanks to apokrisis, Jamber, RhiRhi, astrobdw, mikerosenberg, ariannap for twittering about #mof08.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 10:11 pm and is filed under Industry Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.