Roadtrippers, an online road trip planning platform, has released several data points surrounding the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on road-based trip planning activity.
The volume of trips planned on Roadtrippers.com the week of April 27 was up 107 percent over the last week of March, which was the pandemic-related low-point for trip-planning activity.
“Before closures started, we were seeing February trip planning intent that was up nearly 30 percent year-over-year, and we were pretty optimistic for 2020,” said vice-president of marketing and communications for Togo Group, Steven Hileman.
Trip planning activity then cratered to a low point at the end of March, a 76 percent decline from March of 2019. The volume of trips planned in April recovered to 65 percent of 2019 activity by the end of the month.
“April intent showed significant gains over the low-point in March, but when we overlaid our Togo RV persona and segmented the activity to RV owners specifically, the volume of trips planned by RVers has already bounced back close to pre-pandemic levels,” adds Hileman. “Retired and college-age road trip planners also appeared to be far less affected by pandemic concerns, with those groups only seeing about a 20 to 25 percent decrease in activity.”
Togo Group are the operators of the Roadtrippers.com website.