July 2006
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National News The inside track
One of the hottest concepts in travel right now is the "insider" experience, where travelers are promised a chance to hobnob with celebrities and go behind the scenes where other tourists rarely visit. For traditional travel agents and tour operators, these VIP extras are a way to fight back against Internet sites where consumers comparison shop and book trips themselves. Companies are selling tours of Russian President Vladimir Putin's entertaining room, visits with Olympic athletes, and drinks with an Indian Maharaja—complete with an elephant parade.
A new survey by Jupiter Research reports a more than 40 percent increase in package sales during 2006 among online travelers requiring multiple products. This comes after relatively flat growth in 2004 and 2005. The findings are contained in a new report, U.S. Travel Consumer Survey, 2006.
Family travel is on the rise this summer, according to four out of five American Express Travel agents polled nationwide, who identified it as one of this year's most significantly increasing travel trends. This summer, family vacations are expanding beyond the traditional getaways to include newer, broader, more active and meaningful travel plans, say agents. They say the top motivators for family travel include the desire to introduce children to different cultures, customs and lifestyles, to experience new things together and create lasting memories. Among other findings, 81 percent of agents are booking family vacations consisting of multi-generational trips that include grandparents. More than two-thirds of agents are seeing grandparents traveling exclusively with their grandchildren—independent of mom and dad.
Millions of Americans are loading up their children, packing their suitcases and kicking off that great exodus known as the summer driving season. By Labor Day, drivers will have logged more than 800 billion miles, or 8.6 billion miles a day, and will have consumed 36 billion gallons of fuel crisscrossing the U.S., according to the Energy Department. The high gasoline prices are not much of a problem, it seems. "People are traveling just as much," said Philip Reed, the consumer advice editor at Edmunds.com. "There is much complaining about fuel prices, but there is still no substitute for the car and for the family vacation. That's a priority that people aren't willing to sacrifice yet," he said.
The hospitality industry will need to address four transformative issues over the next three to five years, including branding, emerging markets, human assets and technology. These factors are expected to be key drivers in determining winners and losers through 2010 and beyond, and are likely to impact shareholder value, according to a new report by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and its member firms and by the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University. The report, "Hospitality 2010," was released at the 28th Annual NYU International Hospitality Investment Conference in New York City.
Member-operators of the American Bus Association named Nashville as the top city visited during the past year. Chicago and Philadelphia took the second- and third-place spots. Favorite non-big city destinations were, in order, Lancaster, Pa.; Branson, Mo.; and Tunica, Miss. Destinations that gave groups the most bang for their buck were Washington, D.C.; Branson, Mo.; and Pigeon Forge, Tenn. Hampton Inn and Drury Inn were the hotel chains that best accommodated groups. |
