Rising cost of travel

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Agree with you wholeheartedly Xiang. I like to see a huge range of people have the opportunity to travel and make their own voyages of discovery. I did my first bouts of travel in my youth which developed in me a life long passion. I enjoy seeing my young nephews hugely enthusiastic about their ventures where their focus now is entirely different to mine. We all enjoy in a our different ways.

I just had a Zoom airlines flight go from $2200 to $2800 in 6 months. That's with booking well in advance (their pricing/business model is set up that way). So that's around 30% rory.

I went to Travelocity and saw SEA-GLA in June 09 for $1119 USD that includes taxes. Might be worth the trip down to SEA

The price I gave is for 2 people return froude1. Direct flights, good arrival and departure times. Believe me I know all the ways to get from the West Coast to the UK. Two years ago I could have got Vancouver-Glasgow return for around $6-700 with a little luck. A year ago I saw a Vancouver-Paris one way for $300 all in. In any event, one fare doesn't change whether costs overall are going up or not does it.

I'm just curious as to what people foresee happening due to rising fares. There is no question of whether they are rising or not.

What will happen? If you need to fly, you will fly. More people will holiday in their own country, although in my case that usually still involves flying. If you have a burning desire to travel you will just save every penny you can until you have enough to do what you want to do. If I lived somewhere like Europe I'd have more options but its not as though I can catch a train or a bus, even to the neighbouring countries.

I don't think you can just say if you need to fly, you will fly. It may reach a point where the average person simply cannot afford to fly. Given that there are whole generations now who are used to being able to fly somewhere for a vacation several times a year, how they will react may prove very interesting.

Even in what you are saying about yourself personally annD, you are still assuming you will be able to afford to travel if not perhaps quite as often. What if you cannot in the sense that a flight costs $5000 for example?

I think there may be major changes about to happen in the travel and tourism industries.

As I said earlier, flights can already cost close to $3,500 (including taxes) depending where I want to go (eg destinations in Africa), so it won't be very long before they reach $5,000. It will just take longer to save. The only time I can forsee not being able to travel is if I am not working and have less in retirement income than I hope to. Now I save between 2 nd 3 years, maybe it will take 5 years, maybe more. After I divorced, it took me 13 years to be in a financial position to travel overseas again.

If the cost of living increases to the extent where I can no longer save, that becomes a whole different issue.

Maybe some real numbers will help put this in perspective. The airline industry is forecasting a 7% decrease in seat sales by the end of this year. That is 59.4 MILLION less seats globally! An awful lot of people are not going to be flying.

Given that the average company works on a profit margin of 4-6%, what will that 7% decrease do to them? You can only restructure and cut jobs so much. What if maintenance is reduced to cut cost? More crashes? Less staff at check-in? Longer lines?

How about travel agencies? The final straw after the losses attributable to internet booking? Not a good time to be starting a job as a trainee travel agent. LOL

The question of what people will do if they can't afford to fly and what affect it will have on the travel and tourism industry is not just academic. If you can fairly reliably predict a shift in anything, there is money to be made. Whether it is selling stock in airlines and buying stock in bus companies or opening a small local tourist business in anticipation of increases in local tourism.

I saw that same article about less seats becoming available.The airlines will park their inefficent aircraft and will cut routes that earn little money.As far as travel agents go that's a field that has been getting squeezed since the internet became popular.Certain maintenence standards must be observed in most countrys or you can't land yor aircraft there I remember a couple of years ago a South American airline was denied landing rights at JFK because of maintenence questions of course all bets are off in under developed countries but thats always been the case.The airlines are still signing up for the new Airbus or Boeing planes and a Canadian airplane maker (name escapes me) seems to be doing well.Fares are up but I would bet that as travel declines to some tourist destinations ground accomodations should drop in price to partially offset your higher airfare.All in all the cost of an airline ticket is cheaper now then it was when I started flying in the 1950s (in real dollars)