With bailouts, credit crunches, mortgage arrears, negative equity and jobs on the line - will you be changing your travel plans?
Although the current economic woes have affected big business and specifically banking jobs most - if it continues everyone will be affected.
Have these problems - real or perceived - altered your travel plans; have you scaled back on plans to visit the known world? or cancelled a vacation, or decided to go somewhere closer to home?
Have you been affected by the economic problems personally? (yet!)
How do you think it will affect the travel industry?
Reply to this Hi Ali,
This is going to be an intersting one in the coming few weeks. What is happening is going to frigthen all of us, well of or not.
As a friend of mine put if...if you get nothing, you can lose nothning....wrong, because if you get nothing an lose your job...this is trouble...and he was quoting the all stuff!
But let put it simply...and I was living and working in Asia in 1997...the plan is to lose less than people around you, to survive just a little better...and than the sun will shine, because aircraft will be empty...and price down, hotels empty...and prices down...basically, we may have less, but if everything is way cheaper, we may live better...it shows that at the end of the day what is important is not what you have, but what you do...
That's my little stone, hoping that everything will go way better very soon...for everybody ....
Peter
Reply to this I dont think I have less money than I used to before the economic crisis. I have in fact more savings due to not being able to travel as much as I used to because of having a little kid to look after.
Mel
Reply to this I've always tried to live my life as if money WAS an option, so no, the current financial problems in the US have had no affect on me yet.
Since I live in Alaska, traveling anywhere far from home is almost cheaper than actually staying here. When I do travel internationally, my family and I have chosen countries that are experiencing economic difficulties, such as Argentina or Thailand ten years ago.
Life is going on as it always has. 😊
Reply to this Maybe it's more the reason to travel. Your USD will go further in other parts of the world. Respond to unemployment by traveling. If you're already traveling - no rush to come home to look for a job.
I work in finance and everyday I daydream about quitting my job to run away from the stress, volatility of the market, and fruitless hard work. Hence, I'm back on this website researching my next escape.
Reply to this Over the last few weeks I have lost several months worth of my travel budget and I imagine I will loose a lot more of it over the coming weeks, but it doesn't change any of my travel plans. I have never really cared for the false value of money anyway - I suppose small pieces of paper are easier to cary than a bunch of chickens and cows though.
I have actually expected the coming financial collapse for quite a while. Hopefully it will force a change in the way people in my country think and function in the world, but most likely it will give us all a few hard years and then we will return back to our normal false economy and wasteful ways.
As far as the travel industry goes, I imagine there will be a slowdown of some sort. Its severity depends on how bad it gets for industries like the airlines. If people don't have money to fly then the airlines will have to drop their prices and then they may be forced to go the way of some of the banks. If that happens then traveling will get a lot more difficult - Of course, I like crossing the ocean on boats, so maybe the difficulties will make traveling even more fun.
Regardless of what happens, there is no point worrying about it.
-Keith
Reply to this During the economic boom at the end of the last decade I noticed that tolerance for the moneysaving ways of backpackers went down. Things like sleeping at airports became more difficult with cranky security guards shooing us into the the less comfortable and colder parts of the airport or the airports being closed to prevent people sleeping there. And the economic boom caused more of the up your budget pestering. I remember talking with an American girl in Rio about how I have noticed the lower levels of respect compared with how it was in the late 80s.
In the last few years I noticed that more are again accepting sleeping in airports etc as an acceptable way to stretch the travel money. Maybe it will also reduce the sleeping in budget accomodation prejudice too.
So, the economic slump may have the advantage of allowing backpackers to move in from the fringes of the travel community. Why does less money floating about make people kinder?
Reply to this I'm always affected by money problems, good economy or bad economy... The problem is I never have money... :-)
My travel plans won't change and neither have I been affected by the current situation... It would also be hard for me to be affected, I have no possessions to speak of, no house, no car, no savings account, no job... I am just a plain old lazy bum... I get money by doing medical trials, that in itself is already an unsure money resource as trials can get cancelled and postponed any time, leaving you stranded without money... I am going through one of those slumps at the moment, I was supposed to start a trial, but it got cancelled, the subsequent trials also got postponed... So I am waiting, my travel plans delayed till I get into the next trial and have money again... I am hoping that will be the upcoming one which I have gone for which is to start in 2 weeks or so... But who knows... Of course maybe the trials got postponed because the companies are having trouble getting money from the banks to put up the trials, so maybe I am affected by it...
Reply to this I still have a little, and emphasis on little, money left in stocks that I was planning on using to extend my current trip another month or so. So, instead of taking another flight and adding some time on in Columbia and Venezuala, I´ll just keep heading up the eastern coast of South America in buses into Brazil for Carnival. So, techincally, yeah, I´ve been affected. But, I don´t know if I could say it is making anything worse for me. It´s like dealing with protests while traveling, just take what is given to you and work around it.
Reply to this Yep! Getting a well paying job in Europe has been difficult on a working holiday visa. This might affect my ability to save for the next adventure.
Here in Ireland, locals are more reluctant to leave good jobs to travel - for fear they mightn't get one when they return. There's also added stress/less disposable income for those with investments.
On a positive note, cheap flights and travel deals are prolific at the moment. If you have any spare cash, a good time to take advantage?!
Reply to this Myself and my girlfriend decided last February to go traveling the world. We have been saving hard as we don't intend on working while traveling and plan on leaving mid-march 09. As it stands, I have a very well paid job with pension and health insurance and it is very secure. Also, I'll have good savings with zero debts. Problem is, if i leave that job I might not get it back and if I do it will be in a different part of the country to where I'm from. We had decided one evening that it would be irresponsible to go traveling (with the world being fecked and all!).
The next morning though after a sleepless night we decided that we shouldn't give up on our dream and that you 'only live once' (sorry for the cliches). So next march we're going to high-tail it out of Ireland and leave the world of recession, credit crunch, global crisis, oil prices, job losses, bail-outs, sub-prime, redundancies........ I'm sure I've missed some so feel free to add to it!
If we stop watching the news and reading papers you wouldn't know a thing has changed. Thats my plan anyway.
Roll on Rio!
(tax hikes.... thats another)
Reply to this In a way, it's almost the best time to travel.
These are times when people start cutting back on luxuries, and vacations are seen as luxuries for most people (sounds crazy, I know). People especially aren't going to be willing or able to spend money on expensive holidays and vacations. A lot of upper-tier luxory hotels and resorts will have a lot of emptry rooms that they will be desperate to fill (big, expensive hotels = expensive mortgage payments & expensive staff payroll). If you have your negotiating skills down cold, you might be able to get a deal on a room that you might typically assume to be way out of your price range. Or even if you're not a great negotiator, booking online through a website that allows anonymous hotel bidding (Hotwire.com) could lead to some great deals.
Just in my own anecdotal experience, I'm going on a RTW trip in March. I was dreading the France and Italy leg trip just because of the expenses, but at the same time I wasn't prepared to write it off. I just assumed I would be hosteling the entire way because there was no way I could afford a hotel room in Paris and stay on budget. Just in the last few days I've noticed hotel prices significantly lower than when I originally priced them several months ago on Hotwire when I was making my budget. Some of the 2 & 3 star hotels are even starting to get into the hostel range. This is 5 months in advance. I imagine the last minute deals for hotels desperate to fill rooms are going to be even more amazing. Especially in off season travel. Even if you're not prepared to quit your job go on a 12 month RTW trip in these economic times, this might be the perfect time to go on a smaller vacation and spend a week in a city that you've put off because you were afraid it would be too expensive and throw you off your budget.
Reply to this Just checked some investments I had--I've lost several thousand dollars so far...and though they are not affecting my travel plans, I am a bit gloomier about my day...
Reply to this We canceled the vacation we had planned for this past summer and we took day trips instead.
Reply to this It's definitely going to affect the travel industry overall. But for people who just really love traveling, as a few people have already said, it's not about the money. I'm going to law school next August and have to pay for that huge expense by myself (roughly 60k per year, plus living expenses where I'll be). But before that I'm taking a month off of work to go to Europe. I know it's not a "smart" move, since I'll not only be losing a month's worth of income but spending yet another month's worth of income after only really working for a few months anyway, but I feel like what the heck, why not, do what you love. Just have to make sure to plan better, which might put me in smaller towns or places that might be more off the beaten path. And I'm kind of excited about that. 😊
Reply to this Great question!
We have been traveling for over 4 months now. ALthough we have discussed total collapse of finincial institutions and not having access to our money, we have not worried too much about it, As long as we can continue to access the meger amount we have set aside for this journey, we will continue as planned for the next 8 months.
We have traded in our material, debt riddled lives for a life on the road with nothing but what we could carry on our backs. I would imagine if we were still enslaved to the 9-5 routine, we would be seriously concerned.
We are better off on the road rather than being a prisoner to our own doing.
Reply to this I dont know anything about economics on a worldwide scale. Or on a countrywide scale for that matter. Does anyone know if the current economic crisis is actually worse than the recessions that seem to come along every 5 or 10 years and then go away again?
Reply to this I'm finding that I couldn't be leaving at a better time! I left my jobs (I worked 3..... 90+hours a week to both pay rent/bills in London and save money), and moved back to the states hoping that by living at home I could work normal hours and save lots. I have a job..... not a great one, but it's a job.... and I'm saving what I need, but it's no where near as easy as I thought it was going to be. My budget has definitely taken a hit! That being said, I'm very excited to get out of here and get to traveling - large in part to escape the stress of finding a "real job" here, I admit!
As for the travel industry, my friend who's been booking all my flights for me is an agent at STA. January was the best month he's had sales wise in a LONG time - lots of gap years and RTW tickets. I guess others are jumping on the "travel while the job market sucks" bandwagon.
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