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Many expecting to travel stateside rather than overseas

5-12-02

By PHYLLIS J. ZORN

Hays Daily News

Domestic vacations look good this year, but international trips are down.

Both Hays travel agencies say their customers are headed to Alaska, Florida, California and Hawaii this year rather than overseas.

“I think people are gradually getting back to international travel,” said Joanne Yost, tour director for Hays Travel and Tours.

Central Europe still is popular with area travelers, she said, but other foreign sites aren't drawing many takers. Yost attributes the decreased demand for foreign travel to lingering fears following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on U.S. cities.

Though travelers are choosing to vacation in the United States, their confidence in air travel is rebounding.

Airline ticket sales plummeted in the aftershock of Sept. 11, Yost said.

“Our air dropped a lot after that. But it's picked back up,” Yost said. “It's getting close to the previous level.”

Georgia Moore, co-owner of Mooretours International, said many customers canceled air travel plans after Sept. 11, but the travel agency is now seeing airline ticket sales run about 80 percent of the pre-disaster level.

“Just today I had a lady comment that she has not flown since Sept. 11. But we do not hear so much about that anymore,” Moore said.

Amtrak rail ticket sales are holding steady.

“We see as many people taking Amtrak as we saw before Sept. 11, and they have not mentioned any more security,” Yost said.

Moore hasn't noticed a drop in Amtrak sales either, but Amtrak doesn't draw a large number of Mooretours' customers.

“We don't have Amtrak going through Hays t it's not a big market for us. Amtrak is really not as reasonable as the airfare,” Moore said.

An Amtrak spokesman confirms the travel agencies' observations.

“Amtrak ridership saw a brief increase immediately following Sept. 11,” said Howard Riefs, spokesman at Amtrak's intercity unit in Chicago.

The increase is just 1 percent over the year before, when comparing the six-month period of October 2000 to March 2001 against October 2001 to March 2002, Riefs said.

Mooretours customers are showing increased interest in cruises, but that's not the case with Hays Travel customers.

“I know we have done a lot of cruises this year compared to other years,” Moore said.

Yost said cruise sales are down some.

“I've heard a couple of people say, ‘We'll probably do this, but what a good target for terrorism,' ” Yost said.

Group motor coach tours are about as popular as ever with Mooretours customers, Moore said.

Hays Travel has sold more motor coach tours this year.

“Group tours are more popular than ever before. I'm talking to people who want a destination, but if it isn't a group, they prefer to wait until we do have one,” Yost said.

She attributes the increased popularity of group tours to security concerns but not necessarily terrorism concerns.

Motor coach travel is a way for widowed and single people to travel in a group, Yost said. They often make friends on the tours and sometimes travel with the same friends again and again.

One travel agent in Colby said business is strong and continues to increase as summer approaches.

“We've been very busy with people traveling anywhere and everywhere. Right after Sept. 11, older people were more sensitive about traveling and more were driving rather than flying,” said Diana Emerick of Round Trip Travel in Colby.

She said due to the fact Colby is a smaller town, the company she works for books fewer trips than would a travel agency in a larger town. She sees more volume of stateside travel than overseas travel.

“We book more stateside travel, but we've got lots of people going to Mexico, particularly Cancun. We are selling packages, air and hotel, and lots of cruises. We average two to three a month, and that's a lot for us in a small town,” she said.

t Reporter Jan Katz Ackerman contributed to this story.