In 2021, tourists’ preferences for coastal homes, mountain cottages, and lakeside getaways remain mostly unchanged. And airlines are eager to profit on travelers’ pent-up demand for these new holiday and remote work hotspots by developing new routes that connect directly to them.
While short-term rentals as a whole suffered in 2020 (particularly in the early days of COVID), several areas experienced considerable increases in occupancy and average daily rates (ADR). Cities were harmed, while rural and tourist markets benefited.
Now that domestic travel is making a comeback, new airline routes will connect travelers directly to smaller airports, providing quicker and more affordable access to some of the country’s hottest target markets and smaller communities. And airlines are banking heavily on reviving their fortunes following a disastrous 2020.
In 2020, the airline industry’s overall revenue fell to roughly 40% of what it was in 2019. Additionally, it is anticipated that aircraft traffic will not reach 2019 levels until 2024. Nonetheless, every major airline in the United States is aiming high in order to profit on and assist the increase in leisure travel by adding new airline routes in 2021 and beyond.
Short-term rental (STR) hosts, property owners, and investors in and around these areas will undoubtedly appreciate these additional routes; some of the United States’ most popular destination destinations are now performing well above or near 2019 levels.
In 2021, tourists’ preferences for coastal homes, mountain cottages, and lakeside getaways remain mostly unchanged. And airlines are eager to profit from travelers’ pent-up demand for these new holiday and remote work hotspots by developing new routes that connect directly to them.
The following are some of the major results from a report from short-term rental data company AirDNA:
- Airlines’ income has shifted away from corporate travel and toward leisure travel.
- Route changes to focus on markets that have performed well in STR, most notably the Southern coastal and Mountain West tourist areas — most notably Florida.
- Allegiant and JetBlue invested in new flights to Jacksonville and Sarasota, respectively, while Southwest reintroduced its summer service to Sarasota, which had the highest occupancy among the top 50 biggest STR markets in April.
- According to 3Victors data, searches between densely populated East and West Coast cities and popular rural destinations have increased significantly since 2019, particularly between New York and Boston and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which reached an incredible 81.3 percent occupancy in June 2021.