If 2008 was the year of the staycation, then ’09 is bound to be the year of the naycation.
As in, nay — we’re not vacationing.
The conventional wisdom about travel is that it will slip by just a few percentage points next year. But the unconventional wisdom — supported by several troubling surveys — points to a much bigger drop.
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I can understand that. As you know if you follow our travels, the Mrs. and I book our vacations with a lot of lead time. Our 2009 vacations were booked and paid for this past August (avid cruisers like us know to book early for the best choice of rooms and fares). That said, we're holding off on 2010 because we don't know how the economy will look then. Were we booking for 2009 now, we'd probably be scaling back a lot.
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A recent Allstate poll found nearly half of all Americans plan to cut back on travel in 2009. An International SOS survey says slightly fewer of us — about 4 out of 10 Americans — are reducing their international trips next year. And a Zagat survey says at least 20 percent of us will travel less in ’09.
But that’s just the half of it. I’ve been talking with people in the industry, who tell me — direct quote here — that travel is poised to “drop off a cliff” in January. In other words, people are telling pollsters one thing but making other plans.
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I think this recession will hit harder than people think and the luxuries in life will be the first things to go. A cruise vacation just isn't in the cards for people who are struggling with the rent payments. I expect lines like Carnival, Norwegian, and Royal Caribbean (along with Disney Cruise Line to some extent - it's still a good value for a family vacation), who cater to the party crowd going to the Caribbean and Mexico, are going to take the biggest hit. Those folks, if they take a vacation at all next year, will probably spend their bucks closer to home.
It looks like 2009 is gonna be a tough year for everybody.
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