International flight prices have jumped 31 percent compared to last year and domestic flight prices are up 25 percent, according to the online travel booking site Kayak.com. Searches for international summer travel are more than 70 percent above last year, whereas domestic flight searches are up 18 percent.
Along with Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain, other European ports of call like Vienna, Prague and Budapest are in high demand, as are Dubai, Egypt and other parts of the Middle East, Ganz says. As parts of Asia and the Pacific Rim reopen, places like Bali, Australia and New Zealand are bouncing back. Artisans of Travel’s “Greece by Yacht” tour, where clients idle away the day on yachts and stay in top-notch hotels each night, is one of the most popular jaunts this summer.
Elise Bronzo, vice president of sales at Indagare, a membership-based travel and media company, agrees that many travelers are flocking back to perennial European favorites like France and Italy. Others are taking a carpe-diem approach and planning bucket-list trips like African safaris, or hiking jaunts in Patagonia, she says.
Five-day stays weren’t out of the question before COVID-19, but that is no longer the case. “Travel in 2019 had reached an age of fast fashion, where we feel that we are now going into more haute couture. Rather than just try to check things off their list of countries to travel to, they are preferring to immerse themselves in one country, or possibly two, by planning stays anywhere from 10 days up to a month,” Bronzo says.