Who Are the Customers, and How Have They Changed from 2017–2026?

A customer database can tell a much bigger story than a simple sales report. Behind every reservation is a person, a household, a journey, a purchasing decision and, sometimes, a major change in the world around them.

The customer data covering 2017–2025 shows exactly this. Before COVID-19, customer activity was relatively strong. The pandemic then produced a dramatic contraction, particularly in international demand. From 2022 onward, the market began rebuilding, with international customers returning and direct bookings becoming increasingly important.

So, who are these customers today? 

The answer is more nuanced than simply saying that customer numbers have increased or decreased. The data points to a customer base that has experienced disruption, recovery and changing purchasing channels, while some characteristics—particularly gender composition—have remained remarkably stable.

What the Data Tells Us About the Customer Base

The available customer dataset contains 24,283 recorded reservations between 2017 and 2025. Of these, 18,265 were recorded as male, 4,324 as female and 1,694 as unknown.

The overall customer profile is therefore strongly male-dominated. Male customers represented between 73% and 77% of annual reservations throughout the period. Female customers remained between 16% and 19%, while the proportion of records with unknown gender declined from 9% in 2017 to 4% in 2025.

This consistency is significant.

Even though the total number of reservations changed substantially, the basic gender composition did not experience a dramatic transformation. This suggests that the major changes in the customer base were driven more by volume, geography and purchasing channels than by a fundamental change in the gender structure.

2017–2019: The Pre-Pandemic Customer

The years immediately preceding COVID-19 provide a useful baseline.

Recorded reservations stood at 2,748 in 2017, increased to 3,613 in 2018, and remained high at 3,493 in 2019.

The 2018 figure represents the highest annual total in the available dataset.

In 2019, the customer base included 2,604 male reservations, 601 female reservations and 288 unknown records.

However, the historical channel data requires an important qualification. The source explicitly warns that its 2017–2018 data is not usable because the source field was not used correctly.

For that reason, comparisons of Agent, Direct and Local activity should be interpreted primarily from 2019 onward.

This is an important principle in customer analytics: before interpreting a trend, analysts must establish whether the underlying data was collected consistently.

2020–2021: COVID-19 Changes the Customer Landscape

Then came the defining disruption of the period: COVID-19.

The pandemic dramatically affected international movement, travel, business activity and consumer behavior around the world. The customer dataset captures the resulting contraction very clearly. Total recorded reservations fell from 3,493 in 2019 to 1,918 in 2020, and then declined further to 1,654 in 2021. This was not a small fluctuation. It represented a major interruption to the customer cycle. International customers were particularly affected. International reservations dropped from 1,920 in 2019 to only 592 in 2020, followed by 667 in 2021. At the same time, local reservations became considerably more important. The dataset records 665 local reservations in 2020 and 580 in 2021, compared with 370 in 2019. The percentage distribution illustrates the shift even more clearly. Local customers represented 16% of the recorded mix in 2019 but rose to 53% in 2020 and 47% in 2021. This does not mean that customers suddenly became permanently more local. Rather, the figures show how an extraordinary external event changed the composition of available demand.

COVID-19 created a situation in which international customer activity contracted sharply while local demand became relatively more prominent. A business analysing this period without considering the pandemic could mistakenly interpret these numbers as a permanent change in customer preference.

The Post-COVID Recovery Begins

The customer landscape started changing again in 2022.

Total reservations increased from the 2021 low of 1,654 to 2,772 in 2022. The total then stood at 2,484 in 2023, 2,774 in 2024 and 2,827 in 2025.

The recovery was particularly visible in international demand. International reservations increased from 667 in 2021 to 1,678 in 2022, followed by 1,381 in 2023, 1,618 in 2024 and 1,814 in 2025. By 2025, international activity had recovered to a level much closer to the pre-pandemic figure of 2019. This is perhaps the clearest evidence that the pandemic-era customer mix should not automatically be treated as the “new normal.” Once international mobility recovered, international customers returned as a major component of demand.

Customers Are Also Changing How They Buy

One of the most interesting changes is not who customers are, but how they reach the business.

From 2019 onward, the share of Agent and Direct international business changed considerably. Agent activity represented 64% of the recorded mix in 2019 and reached 66% in 2022. It subsequently fell to 61% in 2023, 52% in 2024 and 41% in 2025.

Direct business moved in the opposite direction, increasing from 20% in 2019 to 43% in 2025.

This is a meaningful structural change.

• It suggests that direct customer relationships have become increasingly important in the later years of the dataset. For businesses, that means the customer journey cannot be understood only through traditional intermediaries.
• Customers increasingly expect organizations to provide clear information, accessible booking processes and a reliable digital experience that allows them to make decisions independently.
• The practical lesson is simple: a business should not only study the customer; it should study the path the customer takes to reach the business.

Gender: Surprisingly Stable Through the Disruption

While channels and geography changed significantly, gender composition remained relatively stable.

Male customers represented 74% of reservations in 2017, 75% in 2018 and 2019, 77% in both 2020 and 2021, 75% in 2022, 77% in 2023, 73% in 2024 and 76% in 2025. Female customers remained within a much narrower 16–19% range.

This is an important finding because COVID-19 caused a major change in customer volume but did not fundamentally alter the gender distribution in the available records.

1. The lesson for segmentation is that a dramatic fall in overall demand does not necessarily mean every demographic characteristic has changed.
2. Couples and Families: Another Layer of Segmentation
3. Gender is only one way to understand customers.
4. The customer-type classification supplied for this analysis identifies several codes as Couple, including VBUD, V-AT, V4x4, V, SLUX, SBUD, S-AT and S.
5. Other codes are classified as Family, including MC, MBUD, M-AT, M, LUX, LBUD, L6, L5-AT, L5, FLUX, FBUD, F6 and F5.

This classification provides a more behavioral way of looking at the customer base.

A couple and a family may have very different expectations even when they come from the same country and share the same booking channel. Families may require greater capacity and coordination, while couples may prioritize different aspects of convenience and experience.

For customer strategy, this means demographic data should ideally be combined with customer type, geography and acquisition channel.

International Customers Are Not One Single Segment

The geographic data adds another important dimension.

The supplied country mapping covers customers across Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America and Oceania. Countries represented include Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Switzerland, the United States, Canada, Australia, India, Japan, China and many others.

Language differences make this segmentation even more relevant.

For example, the supplied mapping identifies Sweden with Swedish, Norway with Norwegian, the United Kingdom with English, Germany with German, and India with Hindi and English.

This matters because “international customer” is not a single behavioral category.

A customer from Northern Europe may interact with a business differently from a customer from Asia or the Middle East. Effective international customer management therefore requires attention to market, language and regional context—not simply nationality.

What Does This Mean for 2026?

The dataset does not provide completed 2026 figures, so it would be inaccurate to claim that a specific number of customers has already been recorded for 2026.

Instead, 2026 should be considered the next stage of the customer-evolution story.

Three trends deserve particular attention.

1. Direct relationships are becoming more important

Direct international business reached 43% of the recorded mix in 2025, while Agent activity fell to 41%.

Businesses should therefore continue investing in the direct customer journey.

2. International demand has recovered

International reservations reached 1,814 in 2025, compared with 1,920 in 2019.

This suggests that the post-COVID international customer market has regained substantial ground.

3. Customer segmentation needs to become more sophisticated

The most useful customer profile is not simply “male” or “international.”

A stronger profile combines gender + country + region + language + customer type + acquisition channel + year.

That combination can reveal not just who customers are, but how their behavior changes over time.

What We Have Learned from 2017–2026

The customer story is ultimately a story of disruption and adaptation.

The pre-COVID period established a strong customer base. COVID-19 then produced a dramatic reduction in total activity and an especially severe contraction in international demand. Local customers became relatively more important during 2020–2021. From 2022 onward, international demand recovered and direct business became increasingly significant.

Yet some things remained stable.

The gender composition stayed remarkably consistent, with male customers accounting for roughly three-quarters of recorded reservations throughout the period.

This combination of stability and change is what makes the customer data particularly valuable.

The key lesson is that customers do not evolve in one dimension. They change in numbers, geography, purchasing behavior and customer type, while other characteristics may remain stable.

For anyone studying customer behavior—including research connected with Dr. Elle tick's dissertation the period from 2017 through the 2026 outlook provides a useful example of why longitudinal analysis matters. Looking at a single year can show what customers look like. Looking across multiple years can show why the customer profile changed and which changes were temporary, structural or driven by extraordinary events such as COVID-19.

As businesses move further into 2026, the question should therefore not simply be, “How many customers will we have?”

The more valuable question is:

Who are our customers now, how has their behavior changed since 2017, and what can the data teach us about the customer we need to serve next?

That is the real value of customer analytics: turning years of transactions into a clearer understanding of people, markets and the future.