Tag: pre pandemic

The No. 1 Reason Some People Aren’t Traveling This Year | National News

The No. 1 Reason Some People Aren’t Traveling This Year | National News

Posted on by Amanda G. Dean

Fewer travelers report fears of contracting (or spreading) COVID-19. Most border restrictions have been lifted. But there’s still one reason people might not be traveling in 2023: They can’t afford to.

The number one barrier to travel for Americans in 2023 is “lack of money,” according to the annual State of Travel report from Going, a flight deal alert website. Going surveyed thousands of its members by email, and of the 3,274 people who responded, 27% cited lack of money as the main reason for not traveling.

Here’s the full breakdown of responses from the survey around top barriers to travel in 2023:

  • Lack of money: 27%.
  • Lack of time off from work or school: 26%.
  • Family and other commitments: 13%.
  • I traveled as much as I wanted: 12%.
  • Concerns about COVID-19: 8%.
  • COVID-19 travel restrictions: 7%.

To complicate matters, travel prices are especially high. A combination of surging travel demand, industry staff shortages and general inflation led both U.S. hotel room rates and airfares to steadily rise in 2022, marking record highs by May 2022. While average prices for these travel costs have since eased, they’re still higher than pre-pandemic prices.

According to a NerdWallet analysis of data from the consumer price index issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, airfares in January 2023 are up 25.6% versus the same month in 2021, and up 3.7% versus the same month in 2019. January 2023 hotel prices are up 16.3% versus January 2020. 

And perhaps most stark is the surge in rental car prices. High rental car prices became one of the biggest stories of pandemic-era travel as folks opted for road trips over air travel (and the concurrent semiconductor shortage didn’t help). The average car rental price in January 2023 was an incredible 36.7% higher than the same

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Air passengers are using a TikTok travel hack where they pretend to need a wheelchair in an attempt to skip lines, airport CEO claims

Air passengers are using a TikTok travel hack where they pretend to need a wheelchair in an attempt to skip lines, airport CEO claims

Posted on by Amanda G. Dean
Queues form at Heathrow Airport.

Delays and cancellations have caused significant problems for travelers at Heathrow Airport.Anadolu Agency / Contributor / Getty

  • Passengers are pretending to need wheelchairs to avoid airport lines, according to Heathrow’s CEO.

  • John Holland-Kaye told LBC that it’s due to people using a travel hack that they’ve seen on TikTok.

  • Demand for the airport’s wheelchair support team had increased “significantly,” Holland-Kaye said.

The CEO of one of the world’s busiest airports said that some passengers are exploiting a TikTok travel hack, where able-bodied people pretend to need wheelchair support, as a means of bypassing travel chaos.

John Holland-Kaye, CEO of Heathrow Airport, told the Leading Britain’s Conversation (LBC) radio station that the airport has as many people working in its passenger support team as it had before the pandemic. However, demand for the team had increased “significantly,” he said.

“We have more demand than we had before the pandemic,” Holland-Kaye said. “Some of this is because people are using the wheelchair support to try to get fast-tracked through the airport. That is absolutely the wrong thing to be doing.”

He added: “If you go on TikTok, you’ll see that it is one of the travel hacks that people are recommending.”

A spokesperson for Heathrow Airport told Insider that the trend has been reported as happening at other airports. “It’s is obviously something we don’t condone which is why John brought it up today,” they said.

Amid a summer of travel disruption, delays, and flight cancellations — caused by widespread labor shortages that have left aviation firms stretched at peak times — stories have emerged of some disabled passengers being caught up in the disruption at various airports.

Holland-Kaye was responding to a claim by the host that disabled passengers were having to wait for mobility support at Heathrow’s

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London Heathrow Airport boss says airlines are the ones to blame for travel chaos because they slashed baggage-handling jobs and underpay workers

London Heathrow Airport boss says airlines are the ones to blame for travel chaos because they slashed baggage-handling jobs and underpay workers

Posted on by Amanda G. Dean
Suitcases are seen uncollected at Heathrow's Terminal Three bagage reclaim, west of London on July 8, 2022. - British Airways on Wednesday axed another 10,300 short-haul flights up to the end of October, with the aviation sector battling staff shortages and booming demand as the pandemic recedes.

The aviation industry is dealing with a messy summer travel season as demand has returned to pre-pandemic levels — but staffing has not.Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

  • London Heathrow Airport’s chairman, Lord Paul Deighton, blamed airlines for the travel chaos.

  • Airlines cut ground-handling staff during the pandemic and aren’t able to replace them now, he said.

  • That’s because airlines aren’t willing to pay market rates for the wages of baggage handlers, he said.

The chairman of London Heathrow Airport has hit back at airlines blaming the aviation hub for the travel chaos.

Airlines have not managed to recruit enough ground handlers because they are underpaying them, Lord Paul Deighton wrote in the Telegraph on Tuesday. Such workers handle a wide range of jobs in airports from check-in to loading and unloading bags.

“It is a highly competitive, labor intensive, low margin business, characterized by short-term contracts. Airlines have driven down costs over the years, and this was one of the first costs they slashed during the pandemic,” Deighton wrote.

As a result, over half of ground handlers across Europe have left the industry and many with driving skills have been snapped up as delivery drivers, he added. Ground-handling companies are trying to fill the positions, “but if their airline customers won’t pay market rates, then they aren’t able to fill the posts,” Deighton wrote.

Heathrow has been asking airlines to meet demand with adequate ground-handling staff, but “in the last few weeks, we have seen a shocking increase in planes departing without bags and passengers having flights canceled after they were already on board,” he added.

Deighton’s defense of Heathrow Airport came on the back of criticism from airlines as the airport has capped how many passengers can fly out from the facility in a day in order to contain the

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