Summer travel: worse than after 9/11?
When tourism officials compare anything to 9/11, you pay attention. When they say it’s worse than 9/11, you rethink your travel plans.
Even with all the recession jitters, we haven’t heard that kind of talk. Until today.
Nane Aluli, general manager of the Mauian Hotel, a small resort property on the west side of Maui, invoked 9/11 when discussing the outlook for bookings with Pacific Business News.
It’s the slowest it’s been in at least 10 years, probably longer. It’s definitely worse than after 9/11.
Now granted, a 7.6 percent drop in visitor arrivals in April compared with the previous year — largely a result of the almost simultaneous shutdowns of Aloha Airlines and ATA Airlines — doesn’t compare to the aftermath of 9/11 in Hawaii, at least not yet.
But we’re hearing that kind of rhetoric everywhere, not just in Hawaii.
Here’s the outlook in New Orleans, courtesy of New Orleans City Business.
Tourism-based business takes a nosedive during the summer and despite the best efforts of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau and the New Orleans Tourism and Marketing Corp., there is little that can be done to stop the bleeding.
Yikes. Did they say “stop the bleeding”?
The ripple effects of this bloody recession (their words, not mine) are being felt everywhere. Jamaica recently lowered its GDP estimates because of the tourism slowdown.
The Bank of Jamaica is projecting that a recession in the US economy, running to September this year, would lower gross domestic product (GDP) growth in Jamaica by 0.4 percentage point during the fiscal year that ends next March.
And Jamaica isn’t alone. Other islands are bracing for a similar slowdown.
Our own Anita Dunham-Potter highlights the travails of the cruise industry that is leading to surprisingly low prices for summer and fall cruises in Europe and Alaska. These cruise prices and the plight of the industry might now be worse than 9/11, however they are certainly feeling the effects of belt-tightening by the world’s travel market.
At this point, the recession talk is impossible to ignore, at least when it comes to tourism. Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t take a summer vacation. Just that we should maybe take another look at where we plan to go.
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Good article..but can you tell what exactly mean 9/11, and how it helps in vacation travel.