Chamath @ 01:25:30Wrong
economyhealth
Following the COVID‑19-induced demand shock beginning in early 2020, global travel demand will take approximately 19 months to recover to its previous (pre-shock) level.
Whenever there's a demand shock in travel. I like travel, by the way. Just because it's a really good. Another canary in the coal mine... when there's a demand shock, it typically takes 19 months for it to recover one nine months.
Explanation
Chamath’s normalized prediction is that global travel demand after the early‑2020 COVID shock would return to its pre‑shock level in about 19 months (i.e., around October 2021).
What actually happened:
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By late 2021, global travel was still massively depressed.
- UN Tourism (UNWTO) data show that international tourist arrivals in 2020 and 2021 were 72% and 71% below 2019 levels, respectively—meaning 2021 as a whole was still nowhere near pre‑pandemic demand.
- For July–September 2021 (about 17–19 months after the initial shock), international arrivals were still 64% below 2019 globally, with Europe and the Americas also tens of percent below 2019 levels. (unwto.org)
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Global air travel only neared 2019 levels in late 2023.
- IATA reports that full‑year 2023 global air passenger traffic reached 94.1% of 2019, with December 2023 at 97.5% and Q4 2023 at 98.2% of 2019 levels. Another IATA release notes November 2023 demand at 99.1% of November 2019.
- This implies that a near‑full recovery in air travel demand took roughly 3.5 years, not 19 months. (iata.org)
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Global tourism (broader travel demand) recovered even later.
- UN Tourism estimates that international tourism was only 63% of pre‑pandemic levels in 2022 and 88% in 2023, projecting a full recovery by end‑2024.
- Their 2024 data confirm this: about 1.4 billion international tourists in 2024, 99% of pre‑pandemic levels—a practical return to 2019 volumes about four years after the initial shock. (unwto.org)
Given that both air travel and international tourism remained far below 2019 levels at the 19‑month mark and did not effectively recover until late 2023–2024, the prediction that global travel demand would recover in about 19 months was not borne out by the data.