• World Travel

The global economic crisis is not surprisingly affecting world travel. Particularly hit are the destinations that are typically part of longer trips from foreign travelers or in some cases even the larger countries (land mass) are feeling the pinch from those cross country trips by residents.

The trend seems to be traveling shorter distances and staying shorter periods. That naturally translates into needing more of these travelers to keep the occupancy rates higher.

Hit at the start of the travel planning process is the airline industry of course. The full-service carriers that serve those long-distance routes are particularly affected. Shorter length flights handled by regional carriers are seeing some increases as people are traveling more locally.

Until recently, even the cost of gas for your car was too much for very long or frequent trips away from home. There has been an almost 60% reduction in the cost of gas from the highest prices we saw this summer.

So trips are shorter in duration, meaning less stays in hotels, fewer meals served in restaurants. This season sometimes the purpose of the trip is for shopping though or visiting relatives for the holidays. So the hotels see even less stays during the holidays if the purpose of the visit is to see relatives.

International research reports show that American travel into Europe has all but disappeared but that travel within Europe is there. Incentives at luxury accommodations are to be found but they aren’t able to become cut-rate because of their head. So the luxury traveler can get some value but these resorts won’t be able to attract the other markets that might be traveling.

Some are equating the downturn in travel to that which was seen after the 9/11 attacks. That downturn was recovered from and predictions are that this downturn will last as much as a year. There is hope on some fronts as it seems that all the efforts put in by global governments for the economic recovery are unprecedented and intended to spur the credit industry to once again start loaning money. At that point, people may begin to feel more comfortable with travel too.