As the current crisis impacts the worldwide economy, it is the often far-reaching chains of supply sustaining many industries that have been hurt the most. As personal and business travel has come almost to a halt, the food, manufacturing, retail, hospitality and airline industries have felt disruptions associated with the spread of COVID-19. With social distancing in place, the restaurant and tourism industries in particular will feel the impact of reduced business.
StorageCafé looked at the changes in online interest in five of the industries that are most likely to suffer great changes following widespread calls from experts to maintain social distancing: hospitality, retail, moving, housing and self storage.
Report highlights:
- Not surprisingly, the hospitality sector is one of the most affected with searches for “hotels in Denver” plunging from an average of 70 in March 2019 to 13 points in the fourth week of March 2020 and interest in Airbnb dropping from 70 last year to 17 points this year, according to Google trends.
- Americans are focusing more on the larger retailers. Compared to the fourth week of March in 2019, online interest for Walmart went from 41 points to 63 points at the same time in 2020. While the widespread nature of the virus hasn’t stopped many Americans from walking into the store, a large number of them prefer to peruse the shelves online.
- The online interest in terms related to moving to Denver plunged to 31 points in the fourth week of March 2020 on the Google Trends scale from 99 points in the same period in of 2019.
- As hard as it may be to move right now, some people are still forced to hit the road. In order to adapt to the new normal of moving during a pandemic, moving companies have been updating their policies and procedures to adhere to guidelines from the CDC and to address their customers’ growing concerns. See Mayflower’s stance on this here.
- Finding a storage unit close to home has been consistently important for Denverites over the past year, but the volume of searches for this term decreased by a notable 9% in March 2020 as compared to the same month in 2019.
