Gas prices are high, but not high enough to discourage a lot of people from traveling this holiday weekend.
Morgan Dean with AAA says the agency's usual survey finds 45 million Americans are expected to travel at least 50 miles for Memorial Day. He says that's a slight increase over last year.
“Those gas prices scream at us every time we’re driving down the roadway, because of the way it’s marketed,” he says. “But [travelers are] willing to do things to balance the budget to get that downtime. That work-life balance is very, very important to them. We’re saying travel demand remains strong, but economic uncertainty is maybe keeping some of that growth in check this year.”
Dean says AAA expects travelers will cut back in other ways, whether it's vacationing closer to home, and/or spending less where ever they go.
“Instead of that four-hour trip to visit family in another state, maybe they’re only going an hour away,” he says. “If you’re planning on going to a nice hotel at your destination, maybe it’s the budget friendly hotel this year. You’re planning on a trip to some of the attractions in that area, maybe you skip one of those attractions to devote all that money to paying for what it cost to get there.”
Slow growth is what AAA has seen year over year, Dean says.
“Last couple of years we’ve seen between two and four percent growth,” he says. “We think it’s due in a lot of cases to economic uncertainty over the past year-and-a-half, especially with some of the higher prices that we’ve seen for gas and other things over the past eight to ten weeks in the wake of the Iran conflict.”
Dean says the number of Ohioans expected to drive or fly has declined slightly, but the number of people traveling by bus, train or taking a cruise climbed 5%. Nationwide, those numbers are very similar to last year.
He says the survey was conducted in April, before a Hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship in the South Atlantic Ocean.
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