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On beautiful days, lunch-goers fill the street between Williamsburg's quaint shops.
Stephen M. Katz/The Virginian-Pilot
On beautiful days, lunch-goers fill the street between Williamsburg’s quaint shops.
Staff mug of Sian Wilkerson. As seen Thursday, March 2, 2023.Author
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Williamsburg could benefit from upcoming travel trends, research shows.

At the Williamsburg Tourism Council’s September meeting, Amir Eylon from Longwoods International, a market research consultancy, gave a presentation on the road ahead for the travel and tourism industry.

According to the company’s latest research, 9 out of 10 travelers currently have plans to travel within the next six months.

The survey, which looks at a sample of 1,000 adults in the United States, shows that demand for travel has been steady despite hesitations due to inflation, rising costs, problems with airlines and continuing COVID and monkeypox concerns.

While less than 20% of those surveyed said that COVID is still greatly impacting their travel decisions, more than 40% said that they are still changing plans due to COVID. Those changes can include traveling only within the U.S., reducing the number of trips taken and traveling by car instead of taking a flight.

For a market like Williamsburg, which is an easy road trip destination, this is a positive indication that future visitors still abound. This year, tourism in the area has been “slowly but steadily” returning to pre-pandemic levels.

As Eylon explained, the expectations for the near future is that road trips and day trips will be extremely popular. Area businesses can also expect larger party sizes as people look to reconnect with friends and family, as well as increased trip lengths from visitors.

The bottom line, he said, is that businesses “need to meet travelers on their terms” or else they will seek somewhere else. This means that, despite continuing staffing shortages, customer expectations are still very high when it comes to service at restaurants, hotels and more.

In other business at Tuesday’s meeting, Visit Williamsburg CEO Victoria Cimino reported that so far this year, room occupancy, average daily rate and revenue per available room are all up compared to 2019. The average daily rate is a metric used to indicate the average revenue earned for an occupied room on a given day.

Sian Wilkerson, sian.wilkerson@pilotonline.com, 757-342-6616