Slumping sales in the accommodation sector will come as no surprise to anyone who has taken note of the soaring cost of all aspects of travel in the past couple of years. The marginal consumer cannot afford any of it.
Airbnb shares dropped 14% in after-hours trading after the company reported second-quarter earnings that missed analyst expectations and warned that it’s seeing signs of slowing demand from U.S. customers.
Everyone’s pulling back their spending, hunkering down for what at this point seems to be inevitable – a really bad recession … or perhaps a depression. A week down the Jersey shore or Lake George, NY – my typical summer vacation spots – seems like an extravagant expense right now. Not a chance right now with this bone crushing inflation of late. Cannot be justified.
Yup, Consumer Confidence is always more important than every other concocted statistic when evaluating the economy and household budgets both. The media and the politicians can spout out all they want about how things are fantastic and wonderful. But, at the end of the day, the individual knows what they have, and what they don’t have.
In short, the OBM can’t fudge your personal assets like they can the monthly “unexpected” reports.
Depends where you are. My luxury timeshare hotel was 100% occupancy this weekend, yet, a trip into Penticton for dinner Sunday night showed, essentially, a ghost town in the downtown district.
Most of the tourists there, are in their RVs, eating dinner at the campground. For a long weekend, the city was dead.
It’s difficult to enjoy Penticton when every few doors you have to sidestep someone with their worldly possessions sprawled on the sidewalk or have to put up with the stench of skunkweed everywhere. Better to staycation.
We ditched our plans for a vacation to the Maritimes last September. Car rental fees and accommodation costs were just too stupid. We did a trip to Portugal instead. It’s a damned shame that I have to leave my country to have an affordable vacation.
Sounds like Australia. Its cheaper to vacation in Bali or Thailand than go to the local coastal tourist traps.
We ditched going to Cape Breton & Louisburg during the off season, too expensive, few options.
Soon the gov can start housing migrants in Airbnb after they fill up the hotels…… Stoning two birds!!
Some of the Airbnb’s that I have seen, homeless encampments look safer and cleaner…..
Pssst … everyone’s credit cards are full up. Folks are at the end of their fixed-length ropes. And the pleb’s are about to start fashioning knots.
with 20% inflation , the hoipolloi done run out of money . its a binary outcome when you get close to the limit.
Yah, who needs vacations? Let’s go back to the good ol’ days when 10-hour shifts and six-day workweeks were the standard workingman’s workweek. Holidays were Christmas, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, perhaps a couple of other days.
Our elite overlords know that Arbeit macht frei. If they succeed in reducing the population by 95%, well then, we peons are going to have to put in a lot of hours to keep up with our feudal lords’ needs.
I’m getting way too many emails from WestJet and even more from cruise companies. I’ve been on their email lists for years but the volume of them is suddenly a bit frightening.