Brett Keller, CEO of Priceline, joins TheStreet to discuss why both inflation and widespread airline delays haven’t stopped Americans from traveling.
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00:00Are you seeing any changes in consumer travel behavior because of inflation?
00:08Well, inflation has been with us now for a few years and what we're seeing is that
00:13travel in particular is holding up quite well compared to other categories. Consumers continue
00:19to preference travel over hard goods and even, you know, staples to some extent because people love
00:25to travel. They want to get out and it's a way for them to relax, take a vacation and enjoy
00:30themselves. What we're seeing obviously is on the hotel side, you know, price has really shot up the
00:35last couple of years and for the first time, really we're starting to see hotel prices level out and
00:40even start to come down a little bit. So inflation has taken a hard toll in the hotel industry but
00:45now that I think is starting to ease a little bit. So the question will be what happens as we move
00:49through the rest of the summer and into the rest of the year. Will prices start to surge again in
00:54those areas? Speaking of hard tolls, Brett, air travel has been a mess for the last couple of
01:00years. You know, the industry has been contending with staffing shortages and widespread delays and
01:05cancellations. Are these travel disruptions getting to the point where they are weighing on
01:14travelers' choices for the summer? Based on the demand trends, I would say no. They're
01:22not stopping them from boarding airplanes and flying, which is really where most of the
01:26disruption takes place. Again, air traffic is up six or seven percent year over year. As we move
01:32into the holidays and peak periods, it will be higher. What's happening though is there is better
01:36staffing taking place, right? TSA is better staffed. The airlines have put more equipment into the air
01:43and it's enabled them to deal with some of the backlog that happens when you get a bad
01:48weather incident or you have an equipment malfunction. So the airlines, from an operational
01:54perspective, are improving. If you compare this to two years ago, when it was really a very tough
01:59summer for consumers, I think we're going to be in a much better place this year as we were last
02:03year. So there's fewer cancellations and fewer delays, but more flights in the air, so it will
02:09feel more crowded as you're moving through the airports.