Anthony Shephard-Williams is fresh back from his latest long-haul holiday and reflecting on how geopolitical uncertainty is reshaping travel decisions. From rerouted flights to shifting perceptions of risk, he explores what these moments reveal about consumer behaviour, and how research needs to adapt
If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I’m just a little bit obsessed with travelling.
But let’s address the elephant in the room early on. With so much conflict unfolding globally, writing about holidays carries an unavoidable sense of discomfort.
The reality unfolding in Iran over the last couple of months is serious, human, and far-reaching. It’s not a “travel disruption story.” And yet, as with any major geopolitical event, its ripple effects extend into everyday decisions; including whether to go on holiday, cancel, postpone, or carry on regardless.
As someone who is usually booking trips well in advance (I’m already well into making plans up until summer 2027!), I’ve found myself reconsidering plans and adapting in ways I normally wouldn’t.
This isn’t a piece about travel trends in the traditional sense. It’s about how people make decisions when the context around them suddenly changes and when there’s no obvious playbook.
It’s also, whether intentionally or not, a test of how well we really understand consumers at all.
When “normal” decision-making breaks down
Most travel decisions follow a familiar pattern.
- What can I afford right now?
- Where do I feel like going?
- Does it fit around work, family, everything else?
Normally, that’s as complicated as it gets. But recently, those questions are being replaced with very different ones; ones I wouldn’t usually factor in at all.
Suddenly, decisions are being made under conditions behavioural science would describe as high uncertainty, low familiarity, and emotional salience, a combination that fundamentally alters how we think and act. People aren’t just choosing a destination anymore. They’re navigating risk, responsibility and perception, often all at once. And crucially, they’re doing so in ways that don’t always align with what they would have said beforehand.
You can already see this playing out. Recent news coverage points to travellers rethinking routes, avoiding parts of the Middle East, or opting for destinations that feel more stable (as reported in the media this week, the UK staycation is likely to see another boom!).
With demand shifting quickly, prices are responding just as fast, and availability narrowing in ways that wouldn’t normally happen this far ahead of peak travel periods.
The absence of precedent
One of the most important (and often overlooked) dynamics at play is ambiguity aversion.
When people don’t have a clear precedent or when this doesn’t feel like something they’ve “seen before”, they struggle to evaluate options confidently. It’s not just about risk; it’s about not knowing how to interpret the risk.
- Is this comparable to previous conflicts?
- Is it escalating?
- How long could it last for?
Without clear mental reference points, people default to simpler strategies:
- Delay decision making
- Seek reassurance from others
- Avoid making decisions altogether
In travel, that can look like holding off on booking, waiting for external guidance, which in practice often translates into a narrowing of choice or fewer “adventurous” destinations, more familiar ones, and a tendency to stick with what feels known.
For research, this is where things start to get uncomfortable. Because much of what we measure assumes people can articulate how they’ll respond.
In reality, they often can’t, well not until they’re “in it” anyway. I caught myself doing exactly that, looking for something, anything, that felt like a reference point. A past situation, a clear signal. And not really finding one.
Social proof becomes a compass
In moments of uncertainty, people look sideways. If friends are still travelling, it feels more acceptable. If headlines suggest disruption, hesitation grows. If airlines or governments intervene, decisions accelerate.
This is social proof under pressure, not as a marketing tactic, but as a coping mechanism. When we don’t know what to do, we look for signals from others to validate a course of action.
This raises a subtle challenge for insight teams. If behaviour is being shaped in real time by shifting social signals, then asking people what they intend to do becomes a moving target.
The answer depends on when you ask and what the world looked like in that moment.
The role of loss aversion
Another powerful force here is loss aversion; the idea that losses feel more significant than equivalent gains. In this context, travellers aren’t just weighing “Do I still want to go on this holiday?”
They’re weighing up:
- “Do I lose money if I cancel and if so, how much?”
- “Is my safety and well-being at risk, if I go?”
- “Is the airline I’m going with adding fuel surcharges?”
This creates a trade-off between financial loss, emotional loss, and perceived risk and there’s no clean hierarchy between them.
It also helps explain why stated attitudes and actual behaviour can diverge so sharply. A traveller might insist they prioritise safety above all else. And yet, faced with a tangible financial loss, act differently. This is not because they’re inconsistent, it is because the context has changed the weighting of the decision.
I found myself navigating exactly this trade-off recently. We had Easter flights booked to Bangkok via Dubai, returning via Singapore with a stopover in the Middle East. As the situation evolved, we made the decision to cancel our flights (in the knowledge we could get a full refund, which wasn’t easy to confirm) and rebook via Amsterdam instead, accepting the additional cost for peace of mind.
At the time, that decision felt precautionary rather than necessary. But when our original return flight was later cancelled, it became clear just how fragile those plans had been.
What stood out wasn’t the disruption itself, but how quickly the weighting of the decision shifted. What might have felt like an overreaction one day became a rational choice the next.
Decision fatigue, accelerated
What makes situations like this particularly challenging is speed. These aren’t slow, considered decisions. They’re often compressed into short timeframes, driven by:
- news (e.g. how is the conflict unfolding) – including mainstream and social media
- policy changes (e.g. updated government travel advice or restrictions)
- airline updates (e.g. sudden route cancellations or schedule changes, sometimes within days or even hours of a booking decision being made.)
Under time pressure, people rely more on instinct than analysis. In terms of behaviour, this means:
- simplifying choices (“just cancel it”)
- deferring responsibility (“what’s everyone else doing?”)
- or defaulting to the path of least resistance
In practice, this is also creating more fragmented and last-minute booking patterns, with travellers re-routing, delaying, or switching destinations in ways that don’t follow typical seasonal norms.
In other words, decisions become less about optimisation and more about resolution. Which presents a practical challenge for research.
By the time you’ve asked the question, the decision may already have been made, or the context may have shifted enough to make the answer redundant.
The quiet role of moral framing
There’s also a more subtle layer, one that’s rarely acknowledged explicitly.
For some, travel decisions in moments like this carry a sense of moral weight. Is it appropriate to go on holiday? Does continuing with normal life feel insensitive? Or is it reasonable or even necessary to carry on?
There’s no universal answer, but the presence of this internal negotiation shapes behaviour in ways that standard “travel decision” models don’t capture. And it’s not something people will always articulate properly in a research setting.
What this exposes about how we understand consumers
There’s a tendency in market research to assume stability. We build models on past behaviour. We segment based on established needs. We ask people what they would do and take the answers at face value.
But moments like this highlight something uncomfortable: the speed at which destinations fall in and out of favour, or prices shift in response, makes it difficult to rely on patterns that felt stable even a few weeks ago.
Much of consumer behaviour only reveals itself when the context changes. Historical data becomes less reliable. Stated intentions become less predictive. And clearly defined segments start to blur.
The same person can cancel a trip out of caution or go ahead for entirely rational but different reasons. Understanding that requires a shift in emphasis. Away from “What does this person usually do?” and towards “What situation are they in right now and how are they making sense of it?”.
So what does this mean for research?
In stable conditions, research often helps optimise pricing, messaging, positioning. In unstable conditions, it must do something harder. It must help organisations make sense of behaviour that hasn’t settled yet, which means prioritising real-time understanding over static models:
- how people are interpreting risk
- what signals they’re responding to
- and how decisions are being made in real time
Even if those decisions appear inconsistent, they’re often not and they are contextually rational.
So what does this mean for the travel industry?
For companies operating in the travel and global tourism sectors, the instinct might be to provide certainty. But in moments like this, certainty isn’t always credible. What matters more is:
- clarity over reassurance
- flexibility over persuasion
- empathy over optimisation
Consumers don’t expect companies to resolve uncertainty. They expect them to recognise it.
My final thoughts
Travel, for me and my family, has always been about anticipation, something to look forward to, plan, and enjoy. But when the wider context shifts, so does the meaning of those plans.
This isn’t just about disrupted journeys. It’s about disrupted decision-making.
Like many people, I’m still figuring out what the “right” decision looks like. And that uncertainty, in itself, is probably the most telling part.
Even now, looking back on a decision that ultimately proved to be the right one (rerouting flights to Asia via Europe than the Middle East), it doesn’t feel like there was a single “correct” answer at the time.
And for anyone trying to understand consumers, whether in travel or beyond, that’s the point worth paying attention to.