Thrifty Vacationers Seek Bargains Travelers Want Relief From Heat, Best Return On Their Investment
How many people would head for the baking sun of Las Vegas in one of the hottest summers of recent memory? Record numbers, apparently - and that is only one of the paradoxes that has roiled the American tourism industry in the three months between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
Americans fled to the beaches to escape the heat - and then fled from the beaches to escape hurricanes and fire. They flocked to Las Vegas - but not to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, where the temperature is an autumnal 54 degrees year-round. Travel was flat to Europe, where the dollar is weak - and to Mexico, where the dollar is almighty.
And, in a country where endorsements by run-of-the-mill celebrities can pump up sales for everything from jeans to pickup trucks, Americans paid scant heed to rave reviews of tourist destinations by the country’s most powerful politicians, President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
But for all the surprising turns in the travel industry this tropical summer, Americans exhibited the same cool logic they have always shown on their vacations: They wanted to have as much fun for as little money as possible.
For example, Orlando, Fla., home of Disney World, “had a terrific summer,” said Bill Peeper, executive director of the Orlando Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Hotel occupancy was almost 80 percent through June, and even higher in July and August.”
Even so, he added, “many hoteliers said they had to lower their rates because visitors insisted on shopping for the best price.”
By the same token, air traffic in most months this year grew at about 5 percent from the corresponding periods a year earlier, according to the Air Transport Association. “But as air fares went up, to keep up with our costs, traffic went down,” said Chris Chiames, a spokesman for the association. Boardings fell 3 percent in July from the same 1994 month.
Earl Gumz of Parma, Ohio, for one, was determined to get the most bang for his buck. He said he and his wife, Ethel, chose the Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio, on the shores of Lake Erie, for a week’s vacation in June and a four-day return visit last week in part because of its affordability.
“Prices at the park are reasonable,” said Gumz, a 77-year-old retired factory inspector. “And we love to go on all the rides, especially the Magnum and Raptor.”
The Magnum XL-200, one of the world’s fastest and steepest roller coasters with a 205-foot-tall first hill, “takes you up into the clouds,” Gumz rhapsodized, while the Raptor, an inverted roller coaster, “flips you all over the place.”
Americans’ primary purpose, of course, wasn’t to save money, but to enjoy themselves - and for many, that meant finding relief from this summer’s stultifying heat - whether at the beach or in an air-conditioned casino.
The American Automobile Association estimates that this summer will end up as the most traveled ever, capped by the record 29.6 million motorists who are expected to journey 100 miles or more from home this Labor Day weekend. The AAA estimates that the total number of vacation trips this summer will have risen 1.7 percent, to 230 million from 226.1 million last year.
“Our surveys show that cities are the most popular summer destination, followed by town or rural areas, then the beach,” said Jerry Cheske, a spokesman for the association. “But it’s more than likely that during this summer’s heat, a lot of day-trippers, who don’t show up in our survey, went to the beach.”
Foreigners continued to flock to the United States, drawn by the cheap dollar.
“It’s not very expensive at all in the United States,” exulted Marco Kellenberger, a Swiss college student on a nine-week coast-to-coast auto tour of the United States.