Linchi Kwok, Ph.D.

About two years ago, I expected home-sharing and luxury hotels to recover sooner than other lodging products based on a consumer survey about travelers’ shifting intentions to use various lodging products after the pandemic (Kwok, 2020). We have already seen how well home-sharing facilities and extended hotels have been doing since summer 2020. Now that we are gradually recovering from the pandemic, has luxury travel come back yet?      People want to travel again in 2022   Unlike 2020 or 2021, where almost half of the consumers had canceled or postponed their vacations, only 5.5% may push their plans to a later date, and less than 4% want to cancel this year (Jacob, 2022). People are ready to hit the road again. Moreover, many people want longer trips and will book them early. Some luxury vacations are already fully booked this year.      Luxury vacations are trending now   Not everyone lost jobs or struggled during the pandemic. Those who accumulated more wealth in the last two year

There is no real sense of recovery in the hospitality and tourism industry until people travel for business again. The good news is business travel and groups are anticipated to come back in 2022.     Business travel recovery is coming   Amex Global Business Travel , the world’s leading B2B (business-to-business) travel platform, released its 2021 financial results earlier. Business travel recovery is “well underway and gaining momentum.” Particularly, corporate travel recovery is accelerating. Its total transaction value in the last week of February 2022 had already reached 45% of the 2019 levels.   An earlier projection only predicts the entire year of 2022 would reach 49% of the 2019 levels.       American Express CEO believed that the remote work trend also resulted in a new segment of business travel (Hur, 2022). For instance, more workers will travel to the companies’ headquarters to meet with their teams for a few days. He also added that the overall travel and expenses in the

Facebook converted all of its apps and technologies into a new company and brand called Meta in October 2021. Metaverse resurfaces as a new buzzword. People want to know if we will soon live in the metaverse.     Some companies have already gotten into the metaverse   It does not take long for some   pioneers to jump into the metaverse . McDonald’s is one of them. On February 4, the company filed 10 trademark applications to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for both McDonald’s and McCafé, such as:     Virtual food and beverage products, including NFTs (an NFT is a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on the blockchain that can track a unique digital asset’s transfer, ownership, and properties, according to   Napoli, 2021 ) Operating a virtual restaurant online with home delivery features Online actual and virtual concerts   The idea is: when people feel hungry while hanging out in the metaverse, they can just “walk” into a McDonald’s there without coming back to the r