State of Travel 2025: Our 7 Favorite Charts
Skift Research is back this summer with its annual State of Travel 2025 report! We present more than 300 charts and insights from every corner from the travel industry: Airlines, hotels, short-term rentals, online travels, experiences, cruises, and car rentals.
It's a lot, and you should review them all. But we asked Skift Research analysts to pick their favorite charts – together they represent the most important stories in travel right now.
1: Social Media Bookings
Social commerce is a booming opportunity in travel, with Skift Research estimating that social commerce bookings for hotels, airlines, and short-term rentals could be worth a huge $7 billion.
Robin Gilbert-Jones in his report Social Commerce in Travel: Opportunities and Consumer Trends writes: 'Social media is no longer just inspiring travel, it's where trips are being researched, priced, and booked. As platforms evolve into powerful sales channels, creators are becoming the new travel agents, short-form video is replacing static ads, and the booking journey is evolving into a low-friction social interaction.'
2: Vacation Rentals – Airbnb's Dominance
Our analysis of the vacation rental market shows that Airbnb continues to be the dominant player, with 44% of the global market as of 2024. This analysis is based off our deeper market sizing efforts across hotels and short-term rentals in our report, Global Accommodation Sector Market Estimates 2025.
Author Saniya Zanpure writes: 'The global accommodation market, valued at $1.2 trillion in 2024, is projected to reach $1.3 trillion by 2026. Driven by increasing travel demand, the Asia-Pacific region is forecasted to overtake Europe in accommodation revenues by 2026. Despite ongoing geopolitical and regulatory challenges, we anticipate continued moderate growth for the accommodation sector.'
3: The Problem With 'Loyalty'
This chart is from our survey based report, European Travel Insights: Unveiling the Top Trends for 2025.
Author Varsha Arora writes: 'Our analysis of Loyalty Stickiness, a measure of how consistently travelers engage with brands despite price fluctuations, reveals that many frequent travelers remain flexible, switching brands based on pricing and convenience. These insights provide actionable recommendations for brands to refine their loyalty strategies, focusing on more personalized, flexible, and experience-based rewards to enhance retention and reduce loyalty leakage.'
4: Where Airlines Find High Margins
The chart above shows that travelers exhibit stronger loyalty to airlines than they do to hotels. Airlines generally having robust frequent flyer programs that offer valuable incentives, such as free flights, priority boarding, and lounge access.
In our recent report, Airline Loyalty: The Financial Powerhouse at the Center of Airline Strategy, author Ashab Rizvi writes: 'Airline loyalty programs have become significant financial powerhouses, with some experts arguing that the value of an airline's loyalty program can even surpass that of the airline itself. This is partly because loyalty programs often demonstrate better growth and higher profit margins compared to the core airline business, while also generating steady cash flows.'
Our analysis below shows the high margins of loyalty programs at airlines such as Qantas and IAG.
5: Global Hotel Performance Is Softening
The Skift Travel Health Index yields a monthly score that tells us how healthy the global travel industry is. It tracks overall performance across 22 countries and 4 key sectors: airlines, hotels, vacation rentals, and car rentals.
It goes beyond tracking simple demand, considering various KPIs, consumer intent, upcoming booking trends, and supply analysis. From our May 2025 Highlights, we can see that though global hotel performance grew mid- to high-single digits in 2024, year-on-year growth has softened into 2025, with May 2025 reporting a slight 2% decline versus May 2024.
6: AI Visibility For Travel Is Surging
In our report, AI, Google, and the Shift from Keywords to Context in Travel, Seth Borko notes a dramatic increase in travel's AI visibility (i.e. the frequency with which consumers encounter AI when searching for travel) on Google.
In November 2024, less than 3% of flight-related keywords returned an AI Overview. Over the the six months through April 2025, that visibility nearly tripled.
Now nearly 9% of flight keywords triggered an AI Overview. Hotels seem to have a lower visibility baseline, but there has still been a similar exponential increase in the frequency of AI Overviews on Google, going from less than 1% of hotel search keywords six months ago to nearly 3% today.
He writes: 'While AI Overviews offer faster, more contextual responses, they don't necessarily democratize access for travel companies. Instead, these summaries often favor a handful of major players, reinforcing a winner-takes-all model. And even those that feature prominently may see reduced traffic due to the rise of 'zero-click' behavior, where users read summarized content without clicking links to the original sites.
'For travel marketers, this signals the need for a fundamental change in approach. Long-standing reliance on search engine optimization and marketing strategies are being transformed. Even Google itself is at risk of falling revenue from paid advertising. As traveler behavior shifts toward AI platforms, travel businesses will need to adopt new digital strategies, adjust their content formats, and revise their marketing methods.'
7: New Competition From Banks
The entrance of banks and credit card companies into travel has been a key topic in online travel in recent years. With financial institutions launching their own dedicated booking platforms, there has been a disruption of the online distribution landscape with banks now competing directly with online travel agencies and gaining market share.
We cover this topic in depth in our report, The Rise of Credit Card Companies in Online Travel. Pranavi Agarwal writes: 'In 2022, at a JPMorgan Chase investor day, executives said, 'We saw an opportunity during the pandemic to own our own destiny in travel.'
In a broken and dull travel loyalty ecosystem, new entrants such as banks and credit card companies are rapidly disrupting the distribution landscape: shifting from facilitating other brands' loyalty programs to launching their own competing booking platforms.'
Read and download the full State of Travel 2025 report – for free! – for 300+ charts and insights on nearly every corner of the travel industry.
What You'll Learn From This Report:
300+ insights defining the state of travel in 2024
Proprietary and third-party data highlighting travel industry performance
Consumer insights, sector deep dives, and executive perspectives
Regional overviews of travel and tourism performance, based on proprietary Skift Research surveys and data
Data-driven insights on the current state of all travel sectors: airlines, hotels, short-term rentals, online travel, traditional travel agents, multi-day tour operators, tours and activities, cruise, and car rental
Insights into the economic climate as well as major travel trends including the impact of AI, experiential travel, business travel, luxury travel, and sustainability
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