Many scaling down vacations

Many families are choosing to stay closer to home when they travel.

San Francisco Chronicle

The days of cheap travel are over and may be gone for good.

Blame soaring airfares and gasoline prices, which are pushing up the cost of getting from here to there. Add to that a feeble dollar and an overall economic squeeze. The result: For many in the middle class, long-distance travel increasingly is out of reach.

Americans, who take it as their birthright to gallop the globe, venture out on long road trips or jet across the continent for the weekend, are in a state of shock.

“Things are going up, up, up. We can’t even go on a day trip,” moaned Evan Wong, 43, a social worker from Daly City, Calif.

The key factor behind the surge in travel costs is the explosive rise in energy prices. Oil above $135 per barrel and gas at $4 per gallon might not last.

But even if there’s a dip, experts expect gasoline and jet fuel to settle at prices far above their historic levels, putting the cost of flying and driving on a permanently higher plane.

And the weak dollar, which has dramatically pushed up the cost of foreign travel, might not recover its former strength for years to come, if ever.

“This isn’t a blip. It’s a long-term structural change,” said Rich Harrill, director of the International Tourism Research Institute at the University of South Carolina.

As prices rise, some are giving up long-distance travel and staying close to home during their time off from work. There’s even a new name for such behavior — the “staycation.”

But a far larger number are pressing ahead with their getaways, while looking for ways to save a few bucks when they hit the road or take to the skies.

“Most people consider their holidays to be sacred,” Harrill said. “Americans would rather take the sugar off the breakfast table than sacrifice the family vacation.”

In order to preserve their time away, Americans are trading down and downsizing their holidays. They’re choosing locales closer to where they live, taking long weekends instead of weeklong vacations and avoiding dollar-sucking destinations such as London and Paris. They’re choosing alternatives to air travel, such as trains, buses and cruises.

They’re also experimenting with alternative travel arrangements, including home exchanges, shared rides to vacations spots and “couch-surfing,” the aptly named practice of crashing with strangers contacted through the Internet.

“The consumer seems to be able to acclimate,” said Suzanne Cook, research director of the Travel Industry Association, a trade group. “People have made decisions to keep traveling by modifying their trips.”

San Franciscan Bill Chiles, 55, wanted to go camping in Utah’s Zion National Park but was daunted by the prospect of filling the tank of his Volvo station wagon for the 1,500-mile trip. So he and his partner, Max, arranged to go with a friend from Salt Lake City who is visiting San Francisco at the beginning of July, splitting gas costs. They’ll drop him back home before making the return trip.

Chiles, who is retired, said saving money is important.

“Our incomes are kind of limited, but everybody needs a break,” he said.

For travelers, perhaps the most wrenching change has been the sharp run-up in the price of U.S. airline tickets, rolling back, at least in part, the low-cost revolution spurred by discount airlines the past two decades. Not only are fares higher, but passengers are also getting slapped with fuel surcharges and fees for checking luggage.

“It’s not unusual for airfares to be up 100 percent from last year, even 200 percent,” said Terry Trippler, owner of Tripplertravel.com, which tracks air-travel costs.

Over the last generation, flying had become democratized as low fares allowed people across the economic spectrum to take to the air. Now we’re returning to the days when leisure flights were luxuries.

“Airlines are not going to be mass transit like they have been,” Trippler said. “People who used to take the bus are now taking the plane. They’re going to have to get back on the bus.”