Undaunted travelers

When terrorists seized passenger jets on Sept. 11, 2001, and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in suburban Washington, D.C., they could not have fully imagined the consequences.

Four years later, what is remarkable is this: Despite the terrible deaths and injuries, economic damage and the tightening of air security, no one anticipated the most lasting effects on the American traveler.

The attacks helped forge a new U.S. tourist: bold, Internet savvy and more family focused.

True, we avoided travel for a while. But if the terrorists had hoped to keep us from roaming the globe, they failed. Miserably.

More Americans traveled to foreign lands last year than at any time in history, according to U.S. government statistics. Most of our nearly 62 million foreign visits were to Mexico and Canada. But 27 million of us went overseas – a record, up 12 percent from 2003.

Domestic travel is setting records, too. Although many airline companies are drowning in red ink because of fuel prices, low-cost competition and other challenges, they don’t lack for customers. More of us are flying than ever.

Through July of this year, U.S. airlines logged more revenue passenger miles – a measure of overall traffic – than at any time in history, on both domestic and foreign routes.

Throughout the United States, hotels in top markets are, on average, operating nearly as full as they were in 2000, a record year in the industry. They are on track to charge the highest-ever average rates in 2005 – more than $106 per night – according to forecasts by PKF Consulting, an international firm of consultants and specialists in the hotel and tourism industries.

Although business travel still isn’t at 2000 levels, “Leisure travel is back with a vengeance,” said Peter Yesawich, president and chief executive of Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell, a Florida-based marketing firm that co-sponsors annual surveys of U.S. travel consumers.

But we’re not the same travelers we were four years ago.

“The events of 9/11 changed the travel industry forever in a manner that no one forecast or anticipated,” Yesawich said.

Among the biggest transformations traceable to 9/11, in his view: Tourists discovered the Internet, put a higher priority on their families and became less skittish about dangers abroad.

Although consumers in significant numbers had been online for several years by then, many more rushed into cyberspace in the months after the attacks, which sent travel receipts into a tailspin.

Desperate to drum up business, Yesawich said, airlines and hotels drastically dropped prices and e-mailed the deals to customers. Travel sellers couldn’t afford the weeks it took for mailings to get results.

The word went out: Go online for cheap trips.

“Finding a great deal on an airfare or hotel for the very first time on the Internet … is like pulling a slot machine and hitting the jackpot,” Yesawich said. “There’s this huge ‘aha!’ and people go back.”

In just six months, from January through June 2002, visits to Internet travel sites grew by 15 percent, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, an Internet media and market research company. Later more airlines, hotels, tour operators and, finally, cruise lines put their products online.

Today, more than 60 percent of American vacationers use the Internet, either alone or in conjunction with a travel agent, to plan trips, according to the 2005 National Leisure Travel Monitor, one of the annual surveys that Yesawich’s company conducts with Yankelovich Partners. Many also book them online.

Getting beyond the tragedy: Few things could inspire more dread of travel than witnessing the horrific images of 9/11.

But we moved beyond it.

It’s true that passenger traffic on U.S. carriers fell 43 percent in September 2001 over the previous month. But soon it started increasing.

In the last four years, we have returned to the skies in fits and starts, jolted by the SARS epidemic in Asia and the outbreak of the Iraq war and slowed by the headwinds of recession – which actually started months before the 9/11 attacks.

Although we still don’t go to some areas as frequently as we once did – Europe, for instance, received about 1 million fewer U.S. visitors last year than in 2000, a record year – overall, we’ve returned to flying at record levels.

And with each trauma, we seem to get more inured to fear and uncertainty – and even more determined to travel. We’ve become Teflon tourists.

After the Iraq war started in 2003, it took only four weeks for travel to start rebounding, Yesawich said.

U.S. bookings to Spain barely registered a blip in the days after bombers killed nearly 200 people in March 2004 attacks on trains in the Madrid area, travel agents said then.

Tours and cruises to Libya and Kenya are booming despite recent U.S. State Department advisories that warn Americans to “exercise caution” in Libya and to “carefully consider the risks of travel to Kenya at this time due to ongoing safety and security concerns.”

When I recently visited Los Angeles International Airport, some passengers told me they hadn’t cut back on travel since Sept. 11, 2001. They complained about the hassles of security, and having to head for the airport hours before a flight. But forgoing trips wasn’t on the table.

“We probably travel more now,” said Brian Jones of Pasadena, Calif., waiting in line with his wife, Nada, and their two small children to fly to Colorado.

The Sept. 11 attacks “increased my anxiety level,” he added, “but that’s about it.”

He said he worried more about an equipment malfunction when flying than he did about terrorism.

A year ago, the family went to Egypt, part of a region that some travelers have avoided in the last few years.

“We’re not the fearing type,” Nada said.

Ron and Sherrie Shadron of Buena Park, Calif., were also waiting in line. Like the Joneses, they had booked their trip on the Internet: an air-hotel package to Hawaii that totaled just $1,000 for four nights for both.

Sherrie had long used a travel agent to plan her annual cruise vacation. Not anymore. Her son booked their upcoming Mexico cruise on the Web.

But one thing hasn’t changed for the Shadrons in these last four years: They take vacations as often as ever, several times a year.

As for terrorism, Ron said: “If it happens, it happens. You can’t let it affect what you do.”