Covid-19 hit international travel and tourism harder than perhaps any other industry, and some sectors fared worse than others.
With this in mind, FishingBooker drew up a report that looks at the influence of the pandemic and associated lockdowns on the global charter fishing industry by presenting booking growth trends in 2020 compared to 2019.
Vukan Simic, CEO of FishingBooker, says: “I knew that we’re in a resilient industry, but when the lockdowns started, we weren’t sure how it was all going to pan out for our captains and us. As it turns out, fishing is pretty pandemic-proof: it’s easy to social distance on a boat, you’re out in the open, and hygiene standards are already really high. As a result, we had our best business year ever, and so did a majority of the captains we work with.”
Charter fishing in the US almost ground to a complete halt in March and April, but, unlike many other tourism sectors, it saw a phenomenal recovery when states started reopening. The trend continued through the rest of the year, and while expenditure in tourism as a whole fell, online bookings for fishing charters bucked the trend and grew by 24% worldwide.
Fishing charter bookings in Virginia actually experienced a growth of 81% in 2020, making it the seventh top performing US state!
Some other key takeaways from this study are:
- 9 out of the top 10 growth destinations in the US were on the Gulf of Mexico or East Coast, and none on the West Coast.
- 4 out of the 10 US destinations with the biggest drop in bookings were not in the contiguous US.
- 7 out of the 10 fastest growing states, among which Delaware was #1, were on the East Coast. None were on the West Coast.
FishingBooker is the world’s leading platform for booking recreational fishing trips, offering over 30.000 trips in over 1.900 destinations worldwide.
All data about online booking volumes of fishing charters is first-hand data from FishingBooker. You can have a look at the full report here. In case you’re interested in hearing more about our report and trends for 2020, we could set up an interview with our PR Director, Joris Zantvoort. You can reach him at joris.zantvoort@fishingbooker.com or (850) 502-4328.
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