2021 wasn’t quite the year of recovery for air travel. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 38% of American adults traveled by air. Business travel isn’t as common as it used to be, but there is now more interest in leisure travel. Despite the emergence of omicron, more Americans traveled during the 2021 holiday season than during the previous year. While passenger and flight data is a common way to measure air travel, foot traffic data can help analysts understand consumer travel patterns. In the second part of our consumer travel trends series, we examined foot traffic to airports across the U.S. to discover when consumers were flying in 2021. 

Visits to airports began to grow in February 2021. Foot traffic to airports increased significantly and peaked in June and July 2021. Airport traffic was 42% higher in July, compared to the previous month. Starting in August, airports saw a big drop in foot traffic. This may be due to people returning to work and school after summer vacations. Although air travel rose slightly during the holiday season, it didn’t recover to summer levels, possibly because of omicron.

Foot traffic recovery was the highest in July and August 2021, which could reflect summer vacations before the start of the school year. The most affected months for airport foot traffic were the first two months in 2021. Low vaccination rates coupled with slower, post-holiday travel may have contributed to fewer Americans traveling by air during that time period. After August, airports saw a significant decline in foot traffic, before increasing again during the holidays. While foot traffic didn’t return to summer levels, foot traffic in December 2021 was a remarkable 41% higher than in December 2020.

There will always be consumer demand for air travel. People will continue to fly to destinations that are too far away to comfortably drive to or inaccessible by train. Consumer travel patterns in the next few years will continue to shift. For example, business travel will eventually return along with more people traveling for leisure as coronavirus restrictions ease across the world. How can analysts keep up with changes in air travel? Location intelligence is one type of data that businesses can use to predict emerging consumer travel patterns. For more information on using location intelligence to predict travel trends, reach out to one of our experts today.