With higher gas prices and airfares this holiday season, the number of people traveling is nearly unchanged from last year.
That”™s the report from the AAA, which estimates only a 0.7 percent increase over last year”™s 64.7 million travelers. The association estimates that 65.2 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more from home during the Christmas-New Year”™s holiday period.
“Whether driving or flying, Americans face steep increases in their travel budgets during this Christmas-New Year”™s holiday,” said Robert L. Darbelnet, president and CEO of AAA. “Gasoline prices remain at unprecedented levels for this time of year with prices of $3 a gallon or more a common sight across much of the country. Airfares averaging 16 percent more than last Christmas means that bargains may be hard to find for those looking to fly to their destinations.”
Nathan Devore, co-president of Rich Worldwide Travel in Harrison, said he is getting a lot of eleventh-hour requests.
“We have a larger percentage of last-minute requests than in the last five years or so.”
While a significant portion of holiday travel is what Devore called “multigenerational travel,” or visits to family members, many people use the holiday season to go on actual vacations.
Among the popular destinations for people vacationing this time of year include cruises and golf outings to locales in the Caribbean and South America and Central America.
“People want to go where it”™s warm,” Devore said.
He said many of these destinations are places that were not widely visited even five to 10 years ago, such as Costa Rica and Guatemala.
“These countries are developing, and they”™re also developing their tourism,” he said. “It”™s an important form of income for many countries.”
Also popular during this time of year are ski packages, he said. Some of the more popular ski locations are Jackson Hole, Wyo., Utah, Colorado, and mountains in the Northeast.
Travel to Europe, while down because of the weakness of the dollar compared with the Euro, Devore still receives requests to the continent with Italy, Paris, and London being the most popular destinations.
We haven”™t really seen too much of a drop of European travel for the 2007 year going into early 2008,” he said. “People who want to travel there are going.”
According to the AAA, approximately 53 million travelers expect to go by motor vehicle this season, a 0.9 percent increase from the 52.5 million who drove in 2006.
AAA expects 8.9 million Americans ”“ 13.7 percent of holiday travelers ”“ to travel by airplane, a slight decrease of 0.3 percent from last Christmas holiday. A projected 3.3 million travelers will go by train, bus or other mode of transportation.
The majority of holiday travelers, 43.2 percent, will travel with two to three people from their household. Nearly 37 percent plan to travel alone or with one other person from their household. About 20 percent of travelers will travel with four or more people from their household, according to the AAA.
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