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Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

I personally suspect that travel related industries will be one of the last to recover, both due to consumer reticence and due to lower levels of disposable income during the recovery.

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> lower levels of disposable income during the recovery.

There's also going to be a lot of pent-up demand from people who didn't lose jobs and had no outlet for leisure spending during the quarantine. I'm not sure which will win out.

The pandemic doesn't end simply because quarantine is lifted. People will seriously question flying or passing through airports, especially as case counts are getting worse while the restrictions are being lifted.

But the pandemic ends eventually, one way or another. The question is what happens at that point: bacchanal or hermitage.

I also find it really interesting that no one seems interested in pricing in a second wave of any size.

It doesn't even have to be global, just a regional second wave in a tourist hot spot could crush tourism globally.

J.P. Morgan's timeline has a forecasted second wave during mid-late winter 2020-2021. [0]

[0] https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/coronavirus-peak-recover...

Looking at what is happening in the US as of right now, I'm fairly sure the second wave will be more like in July 2020. Unless you count it as still the first wave moving in from the coasts to the heartland and then as it moves back out is that the second wave?

Their analysis has new case rates falling off the peak as quickly as we arrived at it. And new case rates almost zero by end of June? This is wildly optimistic. Italy’s chart looks nothing like their forecast for the US.

Eventually could be years though. You can't put the travel sector into stasis.

Polio didn't stop. Smallpox is not extinct.

> Smallpox is not extinct.

I beg to differ:

"Through the success of the global eradication campaign, smallpox was finally pushed back to the horn of Africa and then to a single last natural case, which occurred in Somalia in 1977. A fatal laboratory-acquired case occurred in the United Kingdom in 1978. The global eradication of smallpox was certified, based on intense verification activities in countries, by a commission of eminent scientists in December 1979 and subsequently endorsed by the World Health Assembly in 1980." (from https://web.archive.org/web/20070921235036/http://www.who.in... )

The Wikipedia page starts with "Smallpox was an infectious disease". I believe this is one of the most powerful sentences I've ever read on the Internet, and it gives me so much hope for what we can achieve.

Smallpox is not extinct:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_virus_retention_contr...

> The debate centers on whether or not the last two remnants of the virus known to cause smallpox, which are kept in tightly controlled government laboratories in the United States and Russia, should finally and irreversibly be destroyed.

Yep.

There are like a couple of hundred cases of Polio every year in the world and for all practical purposes Small pox is extinct.

33 reported cases of polio in 2018

Yeah, but some of them were from episodes of House

We have vaccines for those.

But most people are capped to how much they'll spend on leisure by their vacation time. So there probably isn't much headroom to be gained for people who are regular travellers post this pandemic.

Sure, but like vacation money, vacation time has also been curtailed. I'm currently not on a vacation I had previously planned and working instead, saving both time and money I would have otherwise spent.

I'm in the same boat. Dearly wish I could take a vacation but the state has banned short term rentals for some reason (hotels still open though). So when they let us out of house arrest I plan to get out of town asap.

With the United States heading for unemployment numbers estimated to be as high as 15%-20%, I find it hard to believe that people who are still employed are going to be ramping up their discretionary spending.

Just because you still have a job in May doesn't mean you'll still have one in August.

On the other hand we're almost certainly heading for a recession so (you would hope) there would be some reticence to over spend on luxuries like holidays.

Many folks are booking family vacations like crazy using current low prices and hoping to leverage rebooking flexibility. So there will definitely be at least some pent-up demand. This demand could evaporate though if folks who consider their jobs safe start feeling insecure.

But I think that if the leisure travel collapses it would be because of the economic declines, not medical risks. My 2c.

France announced their borders will remain pretty much closed after the lockdown. I suspect many countries will do the same.

Even people with jobs tighten their belts in a recession. Your job could be gone tomorrow. Who was taking vacations in 2008, or 2009 for that matter? Maybe if you have scratch, but 4 in 10 American's can't come up with $400 let alone a vacation.

Also, companies are realizing that maybe they don't need to spend thousands of dollars for last minute business trips if they can just do a zoom meeting instead.

Personally I don’t think this is true. The entire sales team where I work is itching to be able to travel to potential customers again. They’re not at all satisfied with Zoom as a replacement.

Administrators above them though are beginning to see their desire to travel isn’t actual justified in greater business value, so their mere preference or their assertion is less likely to be believed.

Travel for current or prospective customers has some of the best ROI of nearly any expense at the company, and this is well understood. To the contrary, everyone up the chain including the CEO is even more eager to resume sales travel.

This is precisely the falsehood the present time is dispelling.

I think most salespeople have significantly decreased sales right now.

There are obviously other factors contributing to that other than the lack of travel, but this is not proving that sales will be fine without travel.

But now zoom-sales is competing with zoom-sales, no-one is traveling. I doubt zoom-sales can compete with travel-sales.

I have a friend desperate to get out to his overseas clients before they start thinking about not renewing his contract in favour of a local option. (He is a specialised architect working with a luxury auto brand.)

May I ask what industry you're in?

For us the experience is the opposite!

We cancelled a trip to the US from Australia that would've been in full swing right about now and would normally be very keen to reschedule. However, even once restrictions lift, travel insurance is not likely to cover health issues in the US (especially a declared pandemic) and the risk of incurring huge costs is too great. That sort of thing may be a factor for many people.

Especially Airbnb.

People will be more willing to stay at a hotel where at least some level of cleaning is guaranteed/expected.

In Airbnb, and I have no such guarantees and no idea who stayed at the property before me.

Maybe but Im guessing there will be 1 to 3 months flights are open in summer and there will be lots of crazy partying and spending. (in Europe)

I'm not so sure. Airlines have sent huge numbers of their aircraft to the desert for storage, so quickly spinning up flight supply and then spinning that back down will be expensive.

I find it unlikely this will be the limiting factor in flight demand. Flights are typically booked a few weeks in advance, which is adequate time to go retrieve the planes from the desert and inspect them to insure they are airworthy.

It's not like people are going to be showing up at airports overnight buying flights for the same day.

I often buy week or two weeks before

Oh yeah. I feel like there are going to be totally crazy parties popping up everywhere like there is no tomorrow. And then we will have a spike in births around Feb/Mar 2021

Oh yeah, there’ll be a baby boom, but it’ll all be first born children.

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