Fly Me Away

Amira Bajoka with a tour group in the Middle East.

Travel boom continues despite high prices and poor service

By Paul Natinsky

Rumors of the travel industry’s decline based on pandemic fears, high airfare prices and poor, undertrained workers are vastly overstated. In fact, travel is back at record levels for 2023 and beyond, despite the aftereffects of COVID.

Boom
“It’s out of control. People are like, ‘I’ve got a get out of jail free card and I’m going because I don’t know when they are going to put me back in jail,’” said David Fishman of Cadillac Travel Group in Royal Oak. He said the “fear factor” for leaving the state and the country has been greatly reduced. He is now booking people for Italy, Iceland, South America, Costa Rica and Spain.

“it’s a bright future to be honest with you. I have been in business over 30 years. Now it’s non-stop and I think it’s going to be busier and busier,” said Amira Bajoka of Rena Travel & Tours in Sterling Heights.

At the same time, prices are going up. “It’s not like before when you used to have bargains,” said Bajoka. “(Airfare) to California that was $300 and $400, which we used to think is too much, now is $500 and $600. Iraq before the pandemic in January, February, March we had a special for around $600 or $700, now minimum is $1,370.”

“(2023) is going to be a record-breaking year for every aspect of the travel industry,” said Fishman. “The airlines are going to make so much money they don’t know what to do with it because they are charging astronomical amounts of money; hotels are coming back with a vengeance so you’re going to see higher prices there, but service levels are coming down because of the lack of employees or trained employees.”

Fits & Starts
The timeline for recovery featured a “bouncing effect,” said Fishman. In January 2021, the COVID vaccine was just coming out. People could get a vaccine and start traveling. “Then the CDC said you can travel but you have to get a test to get back in the country, so then people did an about face and began cancelling all their plans again. That all happened in January 2021 and killed the first half of 2021,” said Fishman.

“By 2022, the dust started to settle.” Until the tests to get back into the country were completely lifted, some people wouldn’t leave the country. Other people said, “forget it, I’m traveling anyway.” Things began picking up at the beginning of 2022 and in the second half of 2022, things started to get really busy, said Fishman.

Darkest Before the Dawn
Fishman has been in the travel industry for 40 years and gone through 9/11, the internet travel boom, and the economic downturn of 2007/2008. “I’ve been through it all and this is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I do not know how I survived it, to be honest with you.” He said most travel agencies are gone.

Bajoka said the aftermath of 9/11 was harder on her agency than COVID. “Two weeks with nothing but refunds, refunds, refunds. This one (COVID) they did not give refunds, but gave a credit. So, when they come back, people have to travel because they have a credit in their hands.

“After 9/11 people were afraid to travel, so it was slow even when we came back,” said Bajoka. “This one we were shut down and as soon as the pandemic got easier, people started traveling. They were like, ‘please get us out of here.’”

Bajoka said credits were extended until the end of 2023, contributing to the high demand this year. Demand remains high even though credits reflect the purchase price of airfare before the pandemic and customers have to absorb the increase since COVID, although some downscaled their destinations.

Fishman compared the travel industry’s experience to that of the much-publicized struggles restaurants faced. Restaurants had it bad during the pandemic, but if they had the same experience that travel agencies did, they would have had to “take the food back for every meal they served for the past six months, un-prepare the food, put the raw ingredients on the shelf, get the money back from the customers, and not talk about food for the next six months to a year.”

Because travel is booked six to eight months in advance, not a few days in advance like going out to dinner, travel agency employees were working to get payments back to customers without being able to book and receive revenue for future travel.

Despite the challenges and his 40 years at the helm of Cadillac Travel Group, Fishman said he never considered retirement. He didn’t want a COVID-created departure to be his legacy. He also didn’t want to leave his 22 employees in a bind.

Looking Ahead
The future looks promising for the travel industry. Bajoka said she books a lot of group travel and her typical booking of one or two 30-person groups for destinations in Israel has ballooned to three groups of 40, with waiting lists. She said many of the hotels she works with in Israel and Europe are advising her to make bookings for 2024 and 2025, before they fill up.

All of this exploding demand for travel comes amid not only continued high prices but understaffed facilities and poorly trained service workers. Bajoka and Fishman spoke of long airport lines and diminished service quality throughout the travel industry, including tour operators, cruise lines, and car rental companies.

Another thing they agree on is that buying travel services online is a risk that many refuse to take, especially in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. It seems there is nothing like using an agency that has direct relationships with hoteliers, airline representatives, and others on the destination end of travel plans.

Just in case.