At the end of the first quarter, travel companies spent the end of an otherwise ordinary (even strong) quarter withdrawing their guidances and warning investors that consumer sentiment was sagging. 

Three months later, things are going back to normal. Airlines, hotel chains, and other travel vendors have begun to call their guidance back from extremely short-lived vacations. And although business isn’t back to usual quite yet, travel companies have started off the quarter by posting strong results.

Booking Holdings’ Region Mix Picks Up Slack

Booking Holdings  (BKNG)  needed to restate its guidance, because it never swore off its results at all. The parent company of Booking.com, Priceline, Kayak, and OpenTable beat its profit and revenue expectations. 

The company said that room nights grew 8% year-over-year, gross bookings rose 13%, and its revenue rose 16%. However, it wasn’t necessarily because of a fantastical comeback in U.S. travel spending. Rather, strong international travel seemed to pick up the modest slack for one-time U.S. wanderlusts.

Still, it threw some caution to the wind, warning that its business could, “be impacted by the increase uncertainty in the geopolitical and macroeconomic environment and any subsequent potential effect on consumer spending and behavior, travel patterns, or our partners.”

It said that it expects strong single-digit revenue growth in Q3. That could mean that growth could halve from this quarter’s growth rate, but it remains within the company’s FY 2025 forecast.

Booking was down 1.5% today.

Royal Caribbean Pays the Cost of Staying Afloat

Even Royal Caribbean  (RCL)  had a good quarter, with a healthy earnings beat and a less-than-narrow revenue miss. Revenue rose to $4.54 billion, while earnings per share was $2.71. The cruise line said that demand remained strong, prompting the company to raise its annual profit forecast.

In fact, if it weren’t for ship costs weighing over its profit guidance for the coming quarter, it might well have been among the lucky few companies that rallied on Tuesday.

However, the cruise line did offer some clues that things aren’t completely back to normal, even as consumer sentiments have been seen boomeranging. One big clue is that RCL management said that there had been an increase in last-minute bookings, with more Americans opting to wait and see, rather than book long in advance. 

And that’s despite the company’s own research showing that a super-majority of travelers expect to spend an equal or greater amount on leisure traveling this year, compared with last year. But to that end, we are still waiting to see some of it, even during what is ordinarily peak travel time.

That could mean that some forms of U.S. travel are simply hibernating, waiting to reawaken. But during a time of year that ordinarily sees the greatest flight of travelers, the trend does not seem to be converging towards the record levels forecast by travel industry analysts in the New Year.