Traffic at European airports and US regionals show signs of slow recovery

Advan ,  June 29, 2020

Last week we hosted a webinar where we dug into some key data to help understand and predict trends for the travel and tourism sectors as we head into the summer.

Since Europe was locked down earlier than North America, it has also started opening up sooner. As a comparison, we looked first at foot traffic in European airports to see whether there are any early signs of a pick-up in visitors coming into the peak holiday period.

Overall traffic remains fairly depressed, but there are some signs of growth, particularly in Greece, which depends heavily on tourism income. Foot traffic at Athens airport was still around 78% below the first week of January, but has seen a sharp uptick in the past week.

As a comparison, we looked at the major international US airports. Traffic at these remains down significantly – even below mean levels at the European airports we analyzed. Chicago O’Hare is showing some early signs of increasing visitor numbers, but even here, foot traffic is down 75% compared to the start of the year.

We were also interested in comparing traffic at US regional airports, to see whether there might be indications of more domestic travel, as a substitute for international travel.

Here we did see a bit of a different story, at least for a couple of airports. New York La Guardia and Chicago Midway have both seen a clear increase in traffic over the past 2-3 weeks. Visitors to La Guardia were now only 42% down from January, and to Midway, 47% down.

While Americans and Europeans are still holding back from flying, the story on the ground is quite different. Our miles driven index shows that there is little or no reluctance to get behind the wheel. In June, miles driven in the US was back to the same levels as this time last year.

On a state by state basis the story is a little different. Miles driven in Texas has recovered to levels above those a year ago. In New York the numbers are in line with this time last year, and in California residents are still holding back somewhat from driving.

Interestingly, over the past week in Texas and California - states that have seen a rebound in COVID cases - the miles driven index has suddenly started trending downwards again. A likely indicator that people are starting to get nervous again about leaving the house and resuming normal activity.

To learn more about the data behind this article and what Advan has to offer, visit https://advanresearch.com/.