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How bad is it out there for travelers? Very, very bad

May 28, 2008

It’s just the kind of pick-me-up news we needed to get the summer travel season started. Two new surveys — one released yesterday and one scheduled to be released tomorrow — suggest the state of travel has gone from bad to worse.

The Traveler Sentiment Index has suffered its largest quarterly decline in its brief history, falling from 93.6 in February to 85.7 in April. The index, which is published by The Travel Industry Association and Orlando public relations firm Ypartnership, gauges the attitudes of Americans toward travel, including their desire to travel and ability to go places.

Why the drop? Ypartnership’s Peter Yesawich blamed the steep slide on energy costs.

The high price of gasoline at the pump, escalating air fares, and general perceptions of the overall cost of travel are clearly beginning to impact the manner in which Americans are planning to travel this summer. And consumers are likely to be more aggressive in their pursuit of what they consider to be good value as a result.

The second study, which is scheduled to be released tomorrow by the Travel Industry Association, is being billed as a “landmark survey” that will reveal “millions of trips are avoided due to air travel hassles.”

The TIA was kind enough to send me the embargoed results in advance of its press conference. (Never mind that I’m very upfront about not accepting news under embargo.)

But that’s neither here nor there.

I mean, did we really need a survey to tell us that the nation’s air travel woes were costing us billions of dollars? Or that a majority of air air travelers believe the air travel system is either “broken” or in need of “moderate correction.”

No, we didn’t. But it helps.

And we probably didn’t need anyone to tell us that most travelers don’t think the air travel system will be improved in the near future, either. Doesn’t that go without saying?

Taken together, these surveys lead to the inescapable conclusion that the travel experience is bad and getting worse.

Maybe this isn’t the summer of the staycation. Maybe it’s the year of the staycation.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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5 comments

  • Regina

    Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but I haven’t had any problems over the past year. The headlines screamed about the horrors of flying over the Thanksgiving weekend of 2007, but everything went smoothly for me. I’ve flown a few times since then and had no problems, even though every time I turn around I read something about how bad it is. So I don’t stress about it any more.

  • Joe Farrell

    Ok, I’m gonna piss off everyone who travels by air – but it was GREAT today to be a pilot.

    We spent the weeked in Baltimore at the Red Sox / Orioles series. Flew in Friday evening and went to the game F/Sat/ Sun.

    We left the ballpark in Baltimore at 3.35p – at 7.30p, 3hrs and 55 min later I am sitting in my easy chair, typing this blog entry shortly thereafter. Plus, we needed to walk 15 min to the hotel, go to the bathroom, get the bags from storage, take a cab to the airport, get a briefing and then take off from BWI, fly home, put the airplane away and drive home, the flight distance was 326nm, about 350 miles away. If we drove, google says it would be a 6 hour drive. Sure, on a sunday evening driving around PHL, NY into CT.

    While taxiing for departue I was listening to all of the airline departures being ground stopped into other airports in the northeast [there were some T-storms today] and Chicago. Airliners had 20, 30 and 45min holds in the penalty box and I was taxiied to the runway, in front of the airliners and took off. I did not keep a single airliner from departing. Sure, we needed to a dodge a t-storm on the way north, and we needed to circle once south of NYC for spacing and traffic, but we made if from a ball park in Baltimore to my house outside Hartford CT in less than 4 hours. You could not drive it and could not fly it commercially in that amount of time.

    If convenience truth in travel and fun is more important to you, go check out

    http://beapilot.com or http://flighttraining.aopa.org/projectpilot/

    and see what it takes to fly yourself. Flying yourself cost less, takes less time and is less of a hassle than the airlines. Assuming you are motivated it’ll cost $10k to learn to fly and get an instrument rating so you can fly in bad weather [within reason] and thereafter an airplane [which can be shared with others and costs you from $100-175 hour to operate including all expenses. If you assume 4 people flying for a weekend trip, it’ll be $1000 for 4 tickets now, say from Hartford to Washington DC, Norfolk or that area . The other expenses, hotels and cars / taxis will be the same. Our trip was 4 hours at $155 an hour. Thats about $650 to operate the airplane. We saved $400 by not flying the airlines.

    It is hard to convince people, but when 4 hours ago I was sitting in Camden Yards, it can’t be beat.

  • Robert J, Marsh

    My wifew and I have just encountered a major problem with our travel plans with British Airways (BA.) Reseravtions made/paid for last December for Aug. 2008 travel Baltimore,BWI, to Edinburgh via Heathrow were turned upside down when BA switched to the new arrivals terminal. BA chnaged our connecting flight to one arriving too late for us to join our tour group. With no other BWI or connecting flights available, we had to switch to a Philadelphia departure.
    Initially BA wanted to charge us for the change but supervisory personnel ultimately agreed to absorb the fee. It has taken a couple of weeks to get tickets re-issued and upon receipt of the e-tickets today I can see why. They did make the change on the outbound leg (PHL-LHR) for free but kept the returning flight to Baltimore instead of Philadelphia. I has specifically requested confirmation in our earlier calls the “seating was available on the chnaged flights to/from Philadelphia.”
    BA is refusing to “extend any further courtsey.” on the matter and I have no choice but to pay the change charges and take it up with BA’s Customer Service after the flight. Customer Service will not become involved until the flight is completed.
    We are seasoned travellers who have used BA since the 1990′s with a small group normally of 5 or 6. Our current plans for a tour of the Lake District next year will not include BA.

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  • http://www.SeniorCitizenLocalWeb.com Chris

    US air has pulled this one on us, we ordered tickets over the Internet months in advance and reserved seats due to a health problem of one of our group, when we arrived at the boarding gate, we found that our seats were giving to another who paid more and we were sent to the back of the bus, so to speak. NOT good PR. Next flight, they ran out of overhead storage space and made us check our bags, but since we already went through security, we were not allowed time to open the bags and remove valuables that would have been in our possession, but were now open to anyone that wanted to ‘peek’ or ‘steal’ , no one did, but they could have… Not good PR…..

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