Digital Travel Sales. The entire ecosystem of travel-related businesses and services will show brutal results in 2020. From hotels to airlines to ad spending, it will be the worst year on record for most travel companies. For digital travel sales—which nowadays is how nearly all travel is booked—we originally forecast $215.74 billion in spending.

This report explores the impact of the coronavirus on the US travel industry, including our latest forecasts for digital travel sales, bookers and researchers. KEY STAT: We expect US digital travel sales to fall by 44.7% in 2020 to $115.27 billion and remain below pre-pandemic levels until 2022. Digital Travel Sales: Our Forecast for 2020.

Digital Travel Sales. The entire ecosystem of travel-related businesses and services will show brutal results in 2020. From hotels to airlines to ad spending, it will be the worst year on record for most travel companies. For digital travel sales—which nowadays is how nearly all travel is booked—we originally forecast $215.74 billion in spending.

No industry has been as devastated by the coronavirus pandemic and its effects as travel. Airlines, car rental agencies, hotels and resorts, online booking services, cruises and destination marketing organizations, and business travel support services found their operations ground to a near-halt for much of Q2 2020, and the situation has barely improved in H2.

eMarketer vice president of forecasting Monica Peart shares our worldwide digital travel sales estimates and the impact of online travel agents.

eMarketer forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom shares our recent forecast adjustments for digital travel sales in Japan and South Korea, including the reasons behind the faster-than-expected growth.

In 2020's pandemic-ravaged economy, Uber and Lyft will share in the pain. Usage for both services has been highly correlated with various local and statewide lockdown orders, and although we expect both companies will see better figures in H2 2020 than they did in H1, neither will get close to their 2019 numbers until next year.

In our previous forecast, we anticipated high revenue and user growth for Airbnb. However, the pandemic has severely affected the company along with the overall digital travel industry.

eMarketer principal analysts Mark Dolliver and Nicole Perrin and junior analyst at Insider Intelligence Blake Droesch discuss when the travel industry will recover, Facebook merging its apps' messaging services, corporate culture suffering with remote work, Google's "People Cards," social media ad load, what are we born afraid of and more.

Few industries have been hit as hard by the coronavirus as travel. Recovery will be slow, with many sectors not returning to pre-pandemic levels until at least 2022. Some pandemic-related trends, like increased local “staycations,” may persist.

"Domestic travel, particularly car trips, will be the most popular form of leisure travel this year, and that will depress digital travel sales in 2020 as domestic trips tend to cost less than international travel.". As a result, we estimate that digital travel sales in the US will drop by 44.7% in 2020 with total sales tallying $115.27 billion, a far cry from the $208.44 billion in 2019.