Are travelers upgrading?

I recently had a conversation with Michael Von Wittenau, Regional Director of Sales & Marketing at Oceania Cruises.  I asked him his thoughts about the luxury customer experience.  He said they’re seeing customers upgrading to higher-end experiences and they have very high occupancy rates for 2023.  The question they’re asking: is this increase sustainable, or is it just “revenge travel,” after people didn’t travel for two years?

Here are some highlights from our conversation:

“Drop the word ‘luxury’ – that’s passé, everyone’s looking for ‘experiential travel.’  Everyone’s focused on creating these memorable lifetime experiences.

People had a lot of time to sit back and think during the pandemic.  Many decided they want to upgrade their experience.  At Oceania, our existing customers are buying higher category cabins than they did before or doing more or longer cruises.  And we’re seeing new customers upgrading to Oceania after cruising on larger ships, looking for a more personalized, higher-end experience.

We are seeing ‘revenge travel,’ where people want to spend the money they saved after not travelling during the pandemic.  And then we are seeing people who say, ‘you only live once – I want to have a good time.’  The question is, where is all this extra money coming from?  Are people using credit more?  Will they continue to travel more and higher-end?  We’re not sure.”

I’m sure Michael is not the only one asking these questions.  In upcoming research, we plan to delve deeply into people’s thoughts about spending on high-end experiences in the future.