Travel Frequency Mostly Back to Pre-Pandemic Levels

During the coronavirus pandemic, the share of people doing no traveling at all rose globally, but save for a few exception, the market has normalized now. In 2021, the share of people saying they had done no traveling in the past 12 months grew as high as 29 percent in the United Kingdom and South Korea, up from just 12-14 percent in 2019, or even 33 percent in Germany, up from 17 percent. In countries that didn't have very hard restrictions (or where they weren't enforced as much), the share of non-travelers rose less drastically, for example in Brazil from 17 percent in 2019 to 22 percent in 2021.

Some countries, for example in Asia, hung on to strict quarantine protocols for longer, as a result keeping the number of non-travelers higher for longer. This applies to Japan and also to China, which as a larger country was not so gravely affected overall as domestic travel could continue for some.

The United States did not extend coronavirus protocols but still 28 percent of respondents said in 2024 and 2023 that they hadn't traveled for a year - more than before the pandemic. This could be due to another reason: The cost of living crisis hitting America harder than other countries.