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What will pent up consumer demand look like post-Covid? 1 country can give investors some clues: Australia. Here’s some eye-popping data on how demand for travel/restaurants spiked since Australia reopened 3 months ago...
First, some background. Australia basically went on “full lockdown” until the end of September. Their daily cases have dropped to just ~20/day. Lockdowns ended at the end of Sep. and everything is close to normal: indoor dining, domestic travel, crowds in events, etc.
After reopening, demand for domestic air travel gradually normalized. After 1 month it has surged to levels a bit above 2019. Heres a chart showing travel demand, measured by travel searches in Google (source: https://destinationinsights.withgoogle.com ) $JETS
Hotel demand has seen an even bigger surge. Accommodations generally have been more resilient during Covid but post-lockdown has accelerated that even more in Australia. Here’s a chart showing demand well above 2019 levels.
$ABNB bookings also had a boost. According to @SimilarWeb total visits to http://airbnb.com.au was 7.19m in November, which was 42% more than the average total visits per month last year. AirBnB’s revenue has been more resilient than most hotels’ this year.
Restaurant bookings have seen a surge as well. Starting in November, reservations increased 30% YoY according to OpenTable, while the rest of the world continued to have a huge decrease. It has surged even higher to +60% YoY in December. Pent up demand, not just back to “normal”.
What might have decreased in demand? Streaming TV. There is 1 major Australian streaming service: http://stan.com.au and according to @SimilarWeb, traffic decreased 15% from Sep-Nov compared to June-Aug. (huge caveat: this is just 1 service and YoY data unavailable)
Other trends like e-commerce, and food delivery seem to have more stickiness to them, at least for now. Web traffic to $AMZN has not decreased and neither has traffic to the popular food delivery service @Menulog in Australia.
Insight #1: in February of 2020, looking at consumer trends in China (ie. the increasing usage of videoconference) was a fantastic way of looking into the future of a Covid world. Conversely, looking at the first reopened countries can help predict consumer trends post-Covid.
Insight #2: Just as people were caught off guard on how drastic life would change back in Feb 2020, people might be caught off guard on how desperately and quickly consumers want to travel, eat out and spend money on services when this is over. (Of course, “when” is the big Q)
Thanks to these people whose content/feedback sparked this thread: @Dynamicbrands @GavinSBaker @AndySwan @borrowed_ideas @MadThunderdome @Post_Market @QuisitiveInvest @LiviamCapital @SuperMugatu @richard_chu97 @soonervaluecap @maheath1 Would love a retweet if this was useful
