 | Earlier this morning I got an email asking me to take a leisure travel survey. As someone who spent sixteen years working for Marriott, I was curious about what the questions would be. |
I went through several pages of questions about favorite vacations destinations, activities while on vacation, household income, and ages of my family. Then we got to questions about future vacations. You know, "How likely are you to take a trip to destination A in the next two years?" "How likely are you to travel to that destination in the next five years?" As I answered these questions it suddenly occurred to me: vacation destinations are likely to see decreased business, not just for the duration of the current downturn, but for a long time to come. Why did I come to this conclusion? Let's use my case as an example.
My wife and I had planned to take a 10th anniversary trip to Europe next year. Most likely going to Spain and Portugal for two weeks. I am currently unemployed, for about six months now, so that requires that we think about changing our plans and downsizing.
Maybe we go to New Orleans instead. We could drive. Maybe we could come up with discounted hotel rooms through some of the connections I still have. Otherwise, maybe a vacation home rental somewhere through vrbo.com, which is fast becoming one of favorite websites. We could drive and save money on dining by making some of our own meals.
The lack of disposable income in many households is a bad thing for the travel industry. Until the unemployment rate comes back down, it's not going to get any better for airlines, hotels, restaurants and transportation providers in destination areas. Nothing new here. I think we all understand this.
Here's the kicker. I was thinking that if I got a job tomorrow, we would still be able to go to Europe next year. But it hit me, I probably won't have enough vacation time to make that happen. When I left Marriott, I had nearly five weeks of paid-time-off per year. Using a couple of weeks in one chunk was not a problem. It will probably take five years to get back to the level where my wife and I can take a long vacation again.
With more and more people losing jobs, their vacation time will also be "reset" when they are finally able to find another. It's going to take five years into a full recovery before the leisure travel industry gets back to the levels from a couple of years ago.
In the meantime, keep your eyes open, we should see some pretty good deals. Don't expect a lot of extras or particularly great service for some time to come. This is going to be long and painful in my former industry.
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