Re: Are your travel plans changing??
Married to a travel agent and knowing from her the changes in the field in the last few months, I'd have to say that people are finally starting to get realistic, pulling their heads out of the sand, and dealing with the reality of how the changes in the economy are affecting them--and insofar as this thread is concerned, their travel plans.
Though related to travel only indirectly, for the past several years in our New York State community, I've organized a group heating oil purchase that the oil company now refers to as our 'Mini Oil Cartel.' Just to show what people are contending with, last year I was able to negotiate a price per gallon of $2.50, 30 cents less than the general public; this year it's only 11 cents less and it's $4.65 a gallon--NEARLY DOUBLE! For our home we buy 900 gallons; simple arithmetic tells you that I just wrote a check for $4,185.00 plus the cost of the service contract....
One couple who for years (decades...) have driven a camper van to Florida for several weeks in the winter has already given up on that trip this year. Another couple who regularly fly to California to visit children and grandchildren have now had to take the frequency of these trips out of their travel plans. Remember, this is a small number of households who buy their oil up front and lock in a fixed price; my head spins when I think of countless folks who have already been struggling to keep a roof overhead and food on the table and who have already given up, say, a drive to the Jersey shore for the day and who have no idea what will hit them when they get their first oil delivery bill in, say, October, and then by December they're getting one a month at ever increasing prices as they typically do every winter! Travel? You can be sure that travel plans, already curtailed, will continue to disappear.
We ourselves will continue to travel because my wife calls it 'work'! (I have no complaints....) However, for now we've already dropped Europe from future travel plans on our own (versus a travel agent training opportunity) because of what's happened to the value of the U.S. dollar against the pound and the euro. We can't even say what the immediate future will bring....
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