Americans are bent on traveling and taking vacations. And that part of the American lifestyle is not likely to change.
While the bombing in Atlanta’s Olympic Centennial Park and the crash of TWA Flight 800 chill travelers for a short time, people realize they can’t put life on hold because of these tragedies. Acts by terrorists or acts by kooks are not going to deter people from pursuing their dreams.
If anything, both horrible events only reinforce how fragile life can be and how purely random acts can change the lives of families forever. But, people soon realize, too, that hunkering down accomplishes nothing.
People have gotten to the point where terrorism and tragedies are a part of their lives, said Stanley C. Plog, a California-based marketing psychologist and travel researcher.
“It’s like people who have become adjusted to the traumas in urban areas. People rationalize: `It doesn’t happen very often, so my chances are pretty good.’ “
Plog’s reflections on the effects of the Atlanta bombing and the TWA Flight 800 crash were a postscript to an interview about current travel trends. Plog, chairman and chief executive officer of Plog Research Inc., tracks trends through the American Traveler Survey, based on in-depth interviews with 13,500 households that represent leisure and business travelers. The annual project is backed by airlines, cruise lines, hotel chains, destinations and car rental companies.
“The extensive nature of the data collected allows us to interrelate about the travel habits of people,” Plog explained. “And, our long experience developing and using psychographic profiles offers the advantage of getting into peoples’ heads as well as reporting numbers and trends.”
Americans, he affirmed, are serious about leisure-time travel, as he launched into 10 top trends, stressing, “When asked to rate the importance of taking vacations on a scale of 1 to 10, more than 7 of 10 respondents rated it 8 or better.” The trends:
1. “Leisure time is what we call the currency of the ’90s,” Plog said. “People are willing to trade off salary and other kinds of job benefits to get more time away from the job. They want more time to do the things they want to do.” The feeling, he suggested, stems from people rebelling against having their jobs dominate them. “There’s very little loyalty to jobs any more. Companies don’t show loyalty to their people, so why should people show loyalty to their employers.”
2. “Travel is the most important part of the leisure-time currency,” Plog said. “It has grown from what was once considered a luxury item to a psychological necessity.” Plog noted that many people stayed home during their traditional two-week vacations and used the money to buy furniture or appliances because they lasted longer. “But suddenly,” he noted, “the psychological experiences, the people-related experiences, become the long-lasting things in life, not material goods.”
3. People are traveling more, Plog said. They are taking more vacations. “They are out on the road, and the economy be damned. If the economy slowed somewhat, people still would be traveling.”
4. “People are beginning to take longer trips, a reversal of a trend of shorter trips that started about a dozen years ago,” Plog noted. The trend was for short, decompression getaways, he added. `Now comes the time when a vacation is not just to decompress, it’s to change your whole life. It’s to be different by the time you get back.”
5. “If you take longer trips you have the ability to go to more distant places,” Plog said. A longer trip, he said, is basically anything more than 10 days, which allows people to go just about any place in the world. That’s why travel to some countries in Europe is up by 12 percent or more.
6. People are staying in hotels more, Plog’s survey shows. “There are two compounding reasons why hotel occupancy is so good right now,” Plog said. “One is that more people are traveling. The second is, of those people traveling, the tendency is for them to use hotels more and not to stay with friends and relatives to get some sense of peace and quiet.” In 1994, 83 percent of leisure travelers stayed in a hotel. Last year 87 percent did so.
7. There’s less hotel chain loyalty today than there used to be, Plog noted. People are sampling more hotels, although chain loyalty is still big with business travelers because of the perks they earn.
8. Overall, people are spending more money on travel and more on each trip. And while they’re in a spending mood, Plog noted, people want to experience the luxury hotels rather than mid-priced and budget lodgings. The American Traveler Survey shows that in 1995, median spending for the total year was $1,564 for families with two children under 10; $1,693 for families with two children over 10; and $2,266 for a couple with no children. A household with a median income under $40,000 spent $1,354 for vacations; from $40,000-$60,000, $2,396; from $60,000-$80,000, $3,086; from $80,000-$100,000, $3,949; and over $100,000, $5,821.
9. People are doing more things on their vacations, but the activities tend to be more sedentary. According to Plog, activities pursued on vacations increased by 25 percent in 1995 over 1994 with the strongest increase in activities including visits to beaches, historical sites, old homes, night clubs, casinos, theme parks, plus fine restaurants. The latter accounts for the increase in spending on trips. Plog’s survey also found a bit of growth in several more strenuous activities, among them hiking, backpacking and ecotouring. Plog explained the shift to more sedentary vacations this way: “With the aging of the Baby Boomers , the rise in popularity of less physically demanding vacation activities may reflect the `graying of America.’ “
10. The importance of travel and pursuing more activities should continue over the next three or four years–through 2000, Plog said. This trend, he added, definitely won’t die out next year.
From Plog’s survey and comments, it seems that Americans are taking their leisure time seriously and are looking to discover more about themselves on their vacations. If people indeed are being a bit more introspective about their lives, the trends bode well for everyone.
