Any Preditions For Travel Next Summer?

[Cindala]

Anyone have a feeling on what travel locations will be harder or easier to get for travel next summer? I know a lot depends on the price of oil influencing airfares and the price of gas. Anyone have a crystal ball, or speculation?

 

[kjd]

I have no predictions but I can relate some trends that I have seen when trying to book my vacations for 09. In May we are going to MGC and NCV. While air fares have risen it did not seem unreasonably high to LAS compared to this year. However, I noticed that rental car rates have really increased.

I booked a week in Banff, Canada through II for July. The quotes that I got for air fare are almost double a few years ago. We're also staying in Chicago for a week on Marriott points but the number of points needed hasn't changed from this year. (So far) Chicago hotel rates are way up with an 11%sales tax on top of it.

I'm currently trying to trade for Marbella in September 09. We will try to use a travel package if we get the trade. Air fares are up about 25% from quotes received only a few months ago. I will guess and say that the US dollar will gain value against the Euro in the next year because of rising interest rates in the US. Therefore, more expensive air fares and a slightly better US dollar for 09 is plausable. Overseas vacation places like Europe, Carib islands and HI might lose a lot of family business due to higher costs.

Domesticly, I think fewer families will be taking vacations and many that do will be taking a "one tank" vacation near their home. Flights will still be full because air lines will be parking planes in the desert.

I would also use up frequent flyer miles or MRPs as soon as possible. Devaluation of these programs is here but the programs will not be eliminated. (Remember S & H green stamps) Too many of these programs are tied to very profitable credit card programs.

Finally, Marriott seems to be increasing the incentives for new purchases rather than lower the prices of new ts coming on line. I wonder if this is realistic given the state of the resale market. Will they start to cut their prices? Probably not in the short term.

 

[stevens397]

Great analysis kjd. I think you're right on the money.

Now please PM me some stock selections!

 

[Big Matt]

1) more people will stay at their home resorts if they are close to home
2) more people with trade for points
3) more people will deposit and trade for trips in 2010
4) Hawaii, France, Spain, and Aruba will be easier to get
5) owner rentals will increas at attractive prices
6) many uneducated owners will just pay the maintenance fees and never show up for their week.

 

[kjd]

I don't know if anyone has used this link or not but this site purports to predict air fares over time. The address is http://farecast.live.com/?cid=g_gen_prediction

The site is rather facinating in that it provides custom graphs and charts of the route you are researching. It's all free. Has anyone used this site and if so, how accurate is it? When it makes a prediction it does state the percentage of accuracy. I would be interested in your comments.

 

[MLC]

1) more people will stay at their home resorts if they are close to home
2) more people with trade for points
3) more people will deposit and trade for trips in 2010
4) Hawaii, France, Spain, and Aruba will be easier to get
5) owner rentals will increas at attractive prices
6) many uneducated owners will just pay the maintenance fees and never show up for their week.

I agree with you and I have seen this to be true so far this year on my rentals. My Hawaii, cancun and Aruba are not renting as fast as years past. But I do believe rentals that you can drive to will have a higher demand, which I am starting to see now, which will cause prices to increase.

Time will tell once the emotions are taken out of the economy.

 

[sachs1999]

i am at shadow ridge now and see way more local so cal cars than in the past. i think that people will continue to go local. i can see people buying getaways to local places in the summer even if they are not most in demand units, ie palm springs in summer, even though i love it most dont. or many will even do exchanges for these units, getting terrible value for their units but saving on gas. the think that bothers me is that it is less to fly now than 20 years ago, thats a reality that most people dont realize thanks to the oil mindset these days

 

[JimIg23]

The days of two one-week vacations per year with my family are gone for now. This year I did a two week trip and next year will do the same (Although DW and I may go away alone for a few days or the family will take a small driving trip). Since DW and I am not all that excited about the mid-west resorts, we have to fly for our main vacation. Flights for 5 are way too high now for two different vacations per year. Even to Orlando, which I usually paid $120-$180 per ticket, is looking like $250-$300 now....

 

[lll1929]

I have 2 trips planned next year, one of which is by air and the other within driving distance.

Since I brought directly from the develper, I will be taking advantage of the trade to points.

 

[Cindala]

I know for us, the cost of getting to the vacation destination is a big determining factor for our family. If it was just the two of us going, maybe the impact of high airfares wouldn't be so great.

The uncertainty of the economy, high oil prices, and the increasing cost of everything else is making us take a more conservative approach to where we'll choose to vacation in 2009.

 

[cvmar]

We are going to Maui in the Spring of 09 - SEA-OGG was $769. We went to HNL in January of this year and airfare (purchased in 07) was $406. Fortunately we were able to use miles for 2 of the Maui tickets. We are staying at the Maui Kaanapali Villas for a week and at MOC - 1/2 OV for a week. I rented both from owners and got them for a good price considering this is spring break time. I do hope it is not too crowded as I have never traveled to Hawaii during peak periods and the additional tower at the Marriott will be open.

 

[CMF]

1) more people will stay at their home resorts if they are close to home
2) more people with trade for points
3) more people will deposit and trade for trips in 2010
4) Hawaii, France, Spain, and Aruba will be easier to get
5) owner rentals will increase at attractive prices
6) many uneducated owners will just pay the maintenance fees and never show up for their week.

I hope a bunch of folks deposit their OceanWatch weeks because that's where I would like to go next Summer.

Charles

 

[CapriciousC]

kjd, we've used Farecast in the past and have found it to be fairly accurate. the only downside to it (IMO) is that you can only look a relatively short time into the future, and we tend to book our travel more like 9 to 12 months out.

Regarding airfare for next summer, we just booked tickets for next May/June from Atlanta to Honolulu for $699 round trip. The fares were very variable - my husband is signed up for American Airlines' Farefinder and originally it was quoting us $1300 round trip (we need three tickets, so we were looking at nearly $4000 in airfare alone). Within two days he got an alert about the lower fare and we booked it right away. We're using mileage to upgrade to first class, so overall we feel like we got a pretty good deal. We're in the process of relocating from Los Angeles to Savannah, Georgia, and in the past we've paid around $600 to fly to Hawaii from LAX, so we were pretty excited to find reasonable prices from the east coast.

 

[CATBinCO]

We flew DEN to HNL (stop in LAX) for $342 per person. This was July 2006, tix bought in February 2006. I used Travelocity FareWatcher alert, it emailed me on a Sunday morning and I booked right away. Have prices to Hawaii really gone up that much? Wow. Glad I already went. But can't wait to go back