In a Time-Crunched U.S., Short Trips Get Trendy

The truncating of the American vacation continues. In the last decade, Americans shaved nearly a day off the average pleasure trip, a recent study shows. Weekend trips of two to three days now amount to more than half of all travel in the United States, says the Travel Industry Assn. of America (TIA), a nonprofit trade group dedicated to gathering data about travelers’ habits.

This is unhappy news for anyone whose goal is to go farther for longer or to catch up with those leisure-loving Europeans who seem to spend every August on holiday. When it comes to days off, we are bested not only by Europe but also by a couple of Pacific Rim countries.

Consider these statistics from a recent survey on average annual vacation time by the World Tourism Organization: Italy, 42 days; France, 37 days; Germany, 35 days; Brazil, 34 days; Britain, 28 days; Canada, 26 days; South Korea, 25 days; Japan, 25 days; and the U.S., 13 days.

But there is this consolation: The trips are shorter, but we’re taking more of them. So the travel industry is paying attention to our new habits and is increasingly tailoring its offerings to fit such schedules.

Two cases in point:

* Carnival Cruise Lines, the world’s largest cruise company, has scheduled more short cruises in 2000 than ever--28 itineraries of one to five nights, seven more than last year. By the middle of 2000, more than half the line’s fleet will be sailing itineraries of five days or less, Carnival officials say.

* Tauck Tours, a 74-year-old tour operator that has spent decades selling two-week European itineraries to travelers 65 and older, last year unveiled a new set of weeklong trips to four prime European destinations. The trips were so successful that the Tauck catalog for 2000 contains three additions to the weeklong program, says Robin Tauck, the company’s co-president.

For Carnival, telephone (800) 327-9501, Internet https://www.carnival.com, this spate of shorter cruises is the continuation of a long-term company strategy. In its 27-year history, the company has grown popular largely by offering lower rates (often less than $125 per person per day for a vacation that includes all meals and most activities) and shorter trips than competitors.

Nowadays other cruise lines, notably Royal Caribbean International, tel. (800) 327-6700, Internet https://www.rccl.com, are trying to compete with Carnival by offering three- and four-night cruises. (Both lines have ships stationed at the Port of Los Angeles, offering Mexican cruises of that length.)

But Carnival’s large fleet--at 13, the biggest in the business--allows it to offer a greater variety of ports. Beginning Aug. 31, Carnival’s Victory will spend three weeks sailing four- and five-day cruises from New York to eastern Canada (Halifax, Nova Scotia and sometimes St. John, New Brunswick) and back. (The Destiny also will offer four- and five-day New York-eastern Canada trips for several summer weeks.) On Sept. 30, the Celebration is scheduled to begin a year-round series of four- and five-day cruises to the western Caribbean from Galveston, Texas, an emerging cruise ship port.

Carnival began its major move into the four- and five-day cruise market in May 1998, when the Tropicale started making quick western Caribbean cruises from a home port at Tampa, Fla. The Carnival ship Imagination, based in Miami, undertook a similar program of four- and five-day western Caribbean trips in June.

At Tauck Tours, tel. (800) 468- 2825, Internet https://www.tauck.com, shorter trips represent a strategic shift. Since its founding in the 1920s, Tauck has made a name as a high-end operator, usually offering trips of two or three weeks outside North America. But as the company looked more closely at younger travelers, Tauck says, “we just came to feel that the two-week vacation is not in the cards for most of us in the baby boomer generation.”

Still, to have a meaningful vacation, travelers “need to have at least a week,” Tauck says.

Hence the company’s “A Week In . . .” program, which advertises an “in-depth cultural experience” for travelers “with limited time.” The program’s first batch of one-week destinations, offered in 1999, included Britain, France, Italy and Eastern Europe, with departures every week from March through November. The traveling days were far from lazy (the Italian week includes Rome, Florence and the Umbrian cities of Perugia, Assisi and Todi), but the company tried to give trips a relaxed feel by planning stays of at least two nights in most lodgings, which vary from upscale city hotels to country inns.

“This was new to us,” Tauck says. “We really didn’t know” how consumers would respond.

How did they? Tauck didn’t disclose details, but the answer seems clear from the company catalog. This year, Ireland, Spain and the Alps (featuring Switzerland, Austria and Germany) have joined the original four. Prices vary seasonally, ranging from $1,890 (off-season Italy) to $2,475 (Ireland), air fare excluded, most meals included.

Companies that deal in travel will do well to consider these changing trends. Over a decade of asking travelers about the primary purpose of their trips, the TIA has determined that the length of the average “pleasure” trip dropped from 4.6 days in 1988 to 3.8 days in 1998 (with a brief dip to 3.6 days in 1994).

Of domestic trips in 1998, 13% didn’t include overnight stays, 55% covered one to three nights, 24% covered four to nine nights, and 8% covered 10 nights or more, one of the association’s surveys showed.

Looking at weekends, the TIA’s number crunchers found that the number of Americans’ weekend trips increased by 70% between 1986 and 1996. (The association defines a “trip” as a journey of more than 100 miles.) The result: Weekend trips account for more than half of all U.S. travel.

Because their holidays are brief, Americans don’t range as far as they would on longer trips. A recent TIA survey found that in 1998, just 5% of all U.S. travelers left this country; 55% stayed within 600 miles of home.

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Christopher Reynolds welcomes comments and suggestions, but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053, or send e-mail to chris.reynolds@latimes.com.