NEW YORK — US travel companies including air carriers United Airlines and Southwest Airlines and hotel operators Hilton Worldwide and Wyndham Hotels have issued a collective sigh of relief as budget-conscious Americans have started booking travel again after many put vacation plans on pause earlier this year.
US consumer sentiment rebounded in July from a shaky June, dinged by inflation, a weakening US dollar, and President Donald Trump’s trade war. That translated to a rise in spending, with travel companies seeing an uptick in bookings and expecting stronger fourth-quarter revenue growth.
Companies that primarily service price-sensitive customers or the domestic US market have higher expectations for August, with some seeing the end of the third quarter as an inflection point for what has otherwise been a rocky environment in 2025.
“Just as quickly as demand stepped down in early February due to this uncertainty, it appears that demand is now stepping up,” United Airlines Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella said on a post-earnings call, saying uncertainty has dropped in recent weeks after five months of weak demand.
Hotel operator Hilton echoed those sentiments, saying the freeze in corporate and business travel spending was finally “thawing.”
“Given our overweighting to the domestic market, we would expect to be an outsized beneficiary of any recovery in the domestic demand environment,” said Southwest CEO Robert Jordan on an investor call. The company said demand stabilized in the second quarter, and its recent bookings showed clear signs of improvement.
Most US airline and hotel operators withdrew or cut their financial forecasts in April and May as President Trump’s trade war threw the industry into its most uncertain time since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Still, there is lingering uncertainty over how the economy will fare in an ever-evolving tariff landscape and with inflation still above the US Federal Reserve’s desired 2 percent rate.
