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Anyone notice a slowdown in travel?

T

trexmdr

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Southwest Airlines joins rivals Delta, United in cutting flights, scrapping forecasts

(Southwest = big in Hawaii)

"...the trade war raising the prospect of slower economic growth/higher inflation tourists/corporations are sitting tight leading to a pullback in travel spending."

Wondering if anyone has noticed a slowdown to any of you vacation destinations?
 
A lot of stuff being said about a potentially worsening economy, travel boycotts from certain countries, Canadians selling real estate in record numbers etc. (I might do that too if I needed the money and the asset appreciated substantially, and also got an extra strong boost from currency appreciation vs my own currency).

A lot of "potentially", "maybes", "ifs" in all this talk - yes, there's uncertainty out there.... even in your post I see the words "prospect of slower growth" because it's not showing up in the data (yet).

I've had a harder time renting out a couple of timeshares this year, and did it at lower prices than last year, but I'd attribute that to the unreasonable increase in MFs over the past 2-3 years and having more owners looking to offset that without a corresponding increase in demand. I.e., mostly greater supply, and not necessarily lower demand, but maybe it was both - hard to say.

For what it's worth, Disney World seemed packed over Easter weekend with wait times for popular rides 90-120 minutes and advance dining reservations were as hard as always to get... most people did not seem to be substituting a sit-down meal for Mickey pretzels and cheese dip. On the other hand, I have noticed more $5 Costco rotisserie chickens at the checkout registers there so that's my other 2 cents :)
 
Yeah, I haven't been more than 20 miles from home in 2 weeks. Otoh, I did pick someone up at the airport, so conflicting "DATA" here

btw, as you might expect, TSA publishes Daily Data. Strangely, FRED doesn't take it and make pretty graphs with it, :( and I never bothered to search the TSA site to find a way to do it there. You (or I) would think it'd be there
 
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Reports indicate that there is indeed data showing a slow down. Scheduled flight seats are tracked by various companies not just the airlines.
In addition, some hot spots like Florida and palm springs are indicating lower reservations especially from Canadians. I believe the city (or county) in the palm springs area has embarked on a campaign to convince Canadians to come visit.
 
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Another indicator is the number of good TS resales/giveaways. Someone just gave away a week at WPORV on Timeshare Nation for free (including paying for the closing costs/transfer fees). It's been a while since I've seen one go through there.
 
DP: My flights to and from Hawaii in May still have many seats available. The return flight is over Memorial week so one would expect it to be busy.

I was able to buy tickets to MSP from the west coast for only $89 nonstop on July 4 weekend. Previously, flying anything to/from the midwest cost more than flying to Europe.

Another DP: We own a vacation rental in Tahoe and it has been slow.
 
Two more data points - a few weeks ago ThirdHome eliminated the requirement to have a week on deposit to access keyless exchanges within 60 days. They just announced a keyless exchange promotion for any exchanges prior to August 31st. Both of these are due to the large availability they have now. IMHO, a lot of people with vacation rentals are depositing weeks in ThirdHome that they haven't been able to rent in order to get something out of their ownerships.
 
Good news for those planning to travel, I guess. :shrug:
 
Europe should be less crowded. I am seeing a lot more promos for last minute summer cruises and airfare.
 
The economy has accelerated in some ways as companies and individuals has made purchases ahead of the unknowns of tariffs

It has slowed in other ways such as air travel

CNBC reported a 9.2% surge in the purchase of big-ticket items such as vehicles and appliances in March

I personally purchased a full round of electronics ahead of the tariffs to beat any price increase

I had been planning the purchases for later in the year, but went ahead and did the purchases at whatever sale was running at the time

Everybody else I know stepped up purchases of vehicles, appliances, electronics

What they didn't step up for was trips to Europe, Australia, South America, Africa and even the Antarctic

The trips were in planning stages and were all set aside for the time being
 
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CalGalTraveler said:
This might be behind a paywall but the title tells the story:
Click to expand...
WSJ offers "gift" articles- just look for the "gift"symbol, so you can send articles that are not behind the paywall to people you know. So does NYT and Washington Post and others. It is good advertising for them and a nice way for subscribers to share what they like. ( I can't check this one because I subscribe.)
 
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zentraveler said:
.... check this one
Click to expand...
Nope. "continue this article with a subscription.

Re: gift articles, DH subscribes to NYT and WP, and I do gift article periodically. It took me awhile to realize that the "gift" does not keep on giving. The paywall seems to go back into place after about 2 weeks. But good while it lasts!
 
That’s odd. I have been using gift articles from all three of those papers for a long time without any problem. Some of them have limits, like 10 per month, etc. but I never get near the limit so maybe that’s the issue. Have never had a problem.
 
Wall Street Journal has changed its access to free articles
They announced the changes in early April and had them take effect over the last 10 days
I am not familiar with all the changes as I have not been reading the WSJ for a while
I was receiving the digital daily edition for free for the last 12 months
They sent me an email and said they were no longer going to be sending the digital daily edition and there was a change in how "free" articles could be posted
That may be the changes causing the articles to be behind paywalls again
 
In our household, we are not travelling more or travelling less. I am leaving tomorrow for a domestic trip for a week. In summer we are going away to S. California and Park City, Utah for 6 weeks, golfing 3 times a week while we are on location, and eating out everyday like what we are doing while home. We also booked out Scottsdale trip, Newport Coast and Palm Desert just after Thanksgiving until Feb 2026.

I understand the fear and uncertainty by some people but I doubt it is the majority.
 
Travelling the same amount, but more European trips. I have not seen price drops on the hotels I've booked, so assume there is still demand in the big tourist destinations.
 
I'm sad I have a jury duty thing end of June kind of kiboshing summer travel this year (though it's likely to be a one day thing I don't know when and can't swear it won't go longer. I'm so far traveling the same, but obviously if prices spike again or anyone gets laid off, it'll affect things pretty quick. I love to see deals, but it is true that another bout of inflation will be hard to cover in the short term. The good news for me is I can cut up to 50%ish of my trips easily as they're all cash buys from RCI or II.

I can imagine a lot of the slowdowns won't be in Europe immediately and they might get more busy - it's likely people skipping trips to the US so we might see good domestic opportunities. And I'm kind of amazed anyone mentioned Disney - they're never a canary in the coal mine, they're the "it's over Jim" of travel IMO. They have such a deep backlog of people and IMO could in an emergency induce a lot of demand with sales that for their attendence to drop almost everywhere else would be at 0 tourists first.
 
In the past month I’ve flown about 70,000 miles - all for work. Asia (twice), US and Central Europe. The planes have all been packed. Air travel is typically booked further in advance - so I don’t think we’ll see a real dip in trips until the summer.

On the other hand, hotels in the Marriott and Hilton chains are now giving out suite upgrades (no certificates) much more easily - so I think the higher end hotel business is down with travel being booked in the lower room categories for travel.

Honestly, I like it when it is less crowded.
 
A friend of mine with young kids loves the Vacation Village at Weston (he says the kids love the pool). He told me that he usually encounters many travelers from Canada and this last trip he met relatively few. However, the resort had many more visitors from South America. So what does this mean? Canadians are boycotting but South Americans are fearful that they will soon be barred from visiting the US due to a Muslim-ban type restriction???
 
We noticed fewer Canadian license plates in the parking lots when we were in Palm Desert last month. I have read a lot about the drop in demand, but have not personally traveled enough in the last couple of months to have direct observations.

I don't travel much for work anymore, but I know my employer is being more cautious on spending in anticipation of a slowing economy.
 
jabberwocky said:
In the past month I’ve flown about 70,000 miles - all for work. Asia (twice), US and Central Europe. The planes have all been packed. Air travel is typically booked further in advance - so I don’t think we’ll see a real dip in trips until the summer.
Click to expand...
Wow, quite a lot of travel. I think you're right - everyone I know always books flights at least 3 months out, and often people get non-refundable/changeable tickets to save money and perhaps wrap it up in trip insurance. So people are locked in still.
jabberwocky said:
On the other hand, hotels in the Marriott and Hilton chains are now giving out suite upgrades (no certificates) much more easily - so I think the higher end hotel business is down with travel being booked in the lower room categories for travel.
Click to expand...
I also wonder if there is a general change - TS owners were "ahead of the curve" maybe, but with AirB&B hitting the masses, we've seen people be a little less interested in standard hotel rooms. Especially as many now don't even have a fridge for a cold beverage at night. I think we saw a LOT more "timeshare lite" and extended stay hotels around in the last ... 5 years? For a traveler if there's a Homewood Suites (I know Hilton so translate appropriately to other chains) they often run maybe $20 more than a Hampton Inn or the like, but include a full sized fridge, some utensils and a dishwasher - and the one I did recently had a restaurant and 2 queen beds and pull out sofa. This could easily cut out the need for a second hotel room making it quite the savings for larger families.

Anyway, rambling aside - I wonder if people who would have booked a Hilton suite are booking a vacation home, and cheaper people are booking Homewood Suites style hotels? While I have ranted about how expensive AirB&B often is vs TS, vs a hotel suite they're often a bargin and can have additional benefits potentially.
jabberwocky said:
Honestly, I like it when it is less crowded.
Click to expand...
+100 for me though - I also like it less crowded.
 
We canceled a trip to Spain in March but it was primarily due to flight changes. I was already on the fence about spending so much money on that trip. We will still go at some point, just not now.

We also decided on a road trip for our July trip because between airport parking, car rentals and flights, our simple west coast trip was getting super expensive. So we are doing a combo of overnight stays with family, camping (we still love camping so it is no sacrifice for us) and timeshares. We're super excited about this trip. We'll be staying 2 nights in the Redwoods, then 4 nights at WorldMark Deer Harbor, then a week in Otter Rock, Oregon, followed by 2 nights at Lassen National Park, before heading home. These changes saved almost $1,000 and we're traveling for an extra week.

The bottom line is that I am being a lot more thoughtful about how those travel dollars are being spent. Travel is not a necessity.
 
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