Vacation deflation: breaks get shorter
Yesterday’s leisurely summer vacation for at least a full week or even two has fallen out of favor, tourism officials say.
In its place, there’s a growing trend for vacationers to break their time into a series of long weekends, researchers say.
According to PhoCusWright, long weekend trips are now the most popular type of leisure travel. Leisure travelers take more than twice as many long weekend trips than they do week-long vacations in a year.
“There are no more ‘off’ switches in life,” says Peter Rose, a partner at consumer-research company Yankelovich Inc., based in Chapel Hill, N.C. “We may sleep, but our in-boxes don’t. It’s made it tougher for people to walk away for long periods of time for anything.”
A full 35% of employed US adults aren’t taking all the vacation days they get for the year, inching up from 33% last year, according to Expedia.com’s annual Vacation Deprivation survey. Only 14% plan to take off a full two-week vacation this year, down from 16% the previous year. Another factor: Growth in the number of dual-income couples has made it harder for people to coordinate their vacations.
Last year, more than 40% of married-couple families were dual-income, compared with about 35% in 1977, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“I think we’ve moved into the era of the long weekend,” said John Challenger, chief executive of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. One reason he cites is growing job insecurity.
The travel industry is responding to this trend by offering more options geared toward people who are looking for a quick trip, either by car or short flight, points out Cathy Keefe, spokeswoman for the Travel Industry Association.
“Long weekend trips represent an important opportunity in leisure travel and the online leisure marketplace,” according to Susan Steinbrink, PhoCusWright’s market research analyst. “And while long weekend trips potentially offer travel providers lower margins, they do offer more frequent travelers and trips to target.”
The smaller the financial investment and distance traveled for a trip, the more inclined travelers are to purchase their travel online. In fact, six out of every 10 dollars spent on weekend travel was purchased online versus less than three out of every 10 dollars for week-long vacation travel, according to a study.
Report by David Wilkening
David
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