You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. We don't have to tell you if you've been in an airport recently about the nightmare that is flying right now, and a big part of that has to do with the way that demand has really snapped back following a couple of years of people sitting on the sidelines. We've got a great voice on where people are going, where they're flying, what we can see when it comes to inflation and
the impact that that's having on travel. We have with us Brett Keller, the CEO of price Line. It's part of the publicly traded booking holdings company. Brett. Great to have you with us. How are you. I'm doing well, Thank you, Thanks for having me on today. Yeah, it's really good to have you with us. Okay, So we got a nice little chunk of time with you. So we're gonna talk a lot about trends and where people
are going. But first of all, I want to hear about Labor Day because we got the three day weekend coming up. What are you seeing on your platform in terms of demand for traveling are people getting out there still. Yeah, obviously we're coming off of a very strong summer travel period and we had record you know, demand coming through our platform and through obviously many of the other travel
platforms in the marketplace. After a pretty much a non travel a little bit of demand coming back last year, this year was folks were really getting back traveling again. So as we're coming out of the summer, you know, school starting up again, Labor Day still looks very good in terms of consumer demand, very healthy. People are still continuing to travel despite you know, really what has been a very difficult i think financial period here over the
last couple of months with gas prices, etcetera. We are seeing very healthy patterns for not only Labor Day, but really into the fall as well, as people are really starting to ramp up their searches and their plans for for holiday travel as well. Right, you mentioned gas prices, and let's put this conversation in the context of what
we're seeing in the broader economy right now. Inflation, of course, is on everyone's mind, and the big question we've been asking over the past several months is when does that lead to demand destruction? But it sounds like from what you're saying, you haven't really seen that in your data yet. We haven't yet. And there's two I think facts we
can point to here. One is that hotel demand through the month of July, you know, public data show that that was very healthy, and I think what we're seeing in August continues to be healthy. You know, the drive market is a big market in the US, and gas prices certainly should play a role in that. I think with gas prices coming down a bit over the last few weeks, that's certainly going to help Labor Day. What hasn't really moved down yet is jet fuel prices. Those
are still up over where they were last year. And while flight prices aren't up quite that high, they are still up right there, up versus where they were. Because because we've seen a decline in the price of oil, and as a result, we've seen a decline in the price of regular gas that we used to fill up our cars. Do we anticipate that we're also going to see some sort of decline in the price of jet fuel and then in turn airline tickets to Yeah, that's
stepped down a little bit. You know, if you look back four or five weeks ago jet fuel was up over ad percent, So it's come down you know, ten to fift here in the past few weeks, but it does seem to drag and fall behind its speed of return, uh, compared to you know, gas prices. The consumer they're paying at the pump. So I think we've got a little bit of a weight to go there if even if
pump prices continued to drop in the airspace. And so I want to talk about how this compares to what we have seen but also pre pandemic levels, sort of the demand that you're seeing for flights and hotels, for searches, what does it look like. Well, when you look ahead at fall travel, U flight searches are significantly on the price line platform versus last year. We're seeing flight searches over a versus last year for fall travel, and we're
seeing a hotel switches up not quite that much. But now not all of those consumers are ready to pull the trigger yet, right they're dealing with sticker shock again as they move into fall. But that does indicate a very very high demand to travel, a demand for travel, and so consumers are very active in the market right now, shopping and looking for value that they can pull the trigger on. And I think we're going to see a very healthy labor day. And you know, we can't predict
the future. We don't know what's going to happen with the economic cycles here, but things are I think shaping up in a good place for the fall as well. Hey what about rental cars right now? They're offered on the price line platform. And I was shocked to find that my brother rented a van to carry his three kids and his whole family a few weeks ago. They did it for ten days and it was like thirty five hundred dollars bread just to rent this van. What is going on when it comes to rent our cars?
Rental cars are in a very interesting uh position right now. You know, coming out of the start of the pandemic, there was a couple of things putting pressure on the car industry. First of all, they had had a number of storms throughout two thousand nineteen that depleted quite a bit of their inventory. And as they entered into the pandemic, obviously many of the auto manufacturers had supply chain issues and stopped producing cars, and so that put further pressure
on their fleets. And so as they downsized their fleet significantly. That caused prices to go up. It really just skyrocket. Last year prices were up almost sev versus two thousand nineteen. They've come down a little bit, believe it in hut versus last year, but they're still up six. So consumers are paying significantly more to rent a car today than a couple of years ago. And then you add high gas prices on that. That really puts a dent in
the consumer's wallet. But with that said, they are selling out in a lot of markets, so consumers are still the higher prices. It's amazing that demand certainly is still there.
I mean, we really had no other choice. I guess you could say, when we're all getting together earlier this year, Hey, Brett, stick around because we're gonna do some news and we're gonna come back and we're gonna chat more about all things happening on the price Line platform and more trends, including where everybody is traveling to this fall and what are they gonna be the hot destinations next year. Brett Keller is CEO of price Line. Joining us on zoom
from Norwalk, Connecticut. You're listening to Bloomberg Radio. Let's get right back to Brett Keller, CEO of Price Line. He joins us on zoom from Norwalk, Connecticut. All right, Brett, I gotta tell you, Katie needs a vacation. She's got plenty of days left. I'm looking at her calendar right here, which we can do at Bloomberg, which is fun, and she has a lot of vacation days left, Katie that you gotta burn by the end of the year. I've got some vacation days. I've got to burn by the
end of the year. Brett. Where are people going? Where are the hot places to fly? Right now? Alright? That is the question we need to answer through here. We need to burn some vacations. So if you know, you look at basically any day of the year, the top destinations are typically the entertainment venue. So that's going to be, you know, topping the charts almost always is going to
be Las Vegas, Orlando, New York. But as we started to look at where consumers are searching as we move into the fall, let me share a couple of destinations for you. Obviously, Puerto Rico, you know, San Juan tops our charts in terms of the most search and a domestic destination at least within or close to the borders of the US. Honolulu ranks number two in that list. Miami, of course, always a hot spot, is where people are
flocking here in the next couple of months. Where we are really seeing though searches pick up at a very very high paid it's almost ten times where we were last year, are of course, international destinations. Things were not completely shut down last year, but really took travel. You had to test go through a number of hoops to actually get to your destinations. So this year that window has opened back up and we're seeing people really both
travel two and search for international destinations. And the top ones on our list at least for the fall so far include destinations like Munich, so people are heading to October Fest that is back on the map again. People are going to destinations like Dublin and London. Other top destinations include Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon. Many of the hot spots that used to be big travel destinations for US consumers
are now back in boge again. Okay, Brett, so I actually have vacation days put in for the first week of or rather the second week of October. It's our five year wedding anniversary. We haven't anything. We haven't booked anything. If I'm trying to book international right now, is it
just is it a disaster? Should I not even try? Well, it was a rough summer right The major airports overseas really couldn't handle the pressure in the crowds, and so you heard stories of lines that were forward five hours in length, many people missing flights and rebooking. I think we're past that type of pain when it comes to international travel. We're certainly not dealing with many of the testing protocols and the issues that were associated with covies.
So I think from that perspective, we're in good shape. From the airport and the congestion perspective, it will still be very busy because many of the Europeans are now of course moving around and across countries as well. But things have improved and many of the airports have put limits in place in terms of how many flights have allowed to move through their airports. So I think you'll find that it's tolerable enough that you will want to
travel to some of these destinations. It's it's it's you know, these are the kinds of things that if you keep passing up in life, you're just not going to enjoy some of the best travel that the world has to offer. That's a good point. I always think about Warren Miller and the Warren Miller films. If you don't do it this year, you're gonna be one year older when you
do Brett. Before we go, they're always rumors about the best time to buy tickets, the cheapest days to buy tickets, and the airlines have it pretty pretty figured out in terms of from an analytics perspective, you know how to get the most money from us. Given that we think prices for fuel will go down as a result of lower oil prices, should we still be booking our holiday travel really earlier? Should we wait for prices to fall. Well, one, I'm not sure that I would ever bet on oil
prices falling. They're just as likely to go back up in the future. But when we look back in history, and this is true virtually every year, if you're booking holiday airfare, those are for the major holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, end of year, etcetera. You need to book early. You need to be booking in this September October time frame. If you're talking about other types of fall travel, you really need to book at least two weeks in advance and do not wait until the last week to book
your flight. You will absolutely pay up. And it is true if you fly out on a Tuesday, you will save an average of at least eight percent on your ticket. So book in advance. There are certain days a week that will play to your favor, and on price Line you can do things like mix and match airlines, go
out on one airline, come back on another. That typically can lead to savings of you know, almost ten percent if you're careful and how how you plan, so those types of changes can take off your trip if you're careful and how you plan. But who wants to plan a Tuesday. I don't know, that's the question exactly, that's right. I guess that's why it is so much cheaper. Bret Keller, CEO of price Line, Brett, thanks for taking some time and sticking with us for a little extra time this afternoon.
It was great to get a good chunk of minutes with you.