Fear of Flying a Bad Sign for Travel Industries
No matter what, Gwen Balducci wasn’t about to stick with plans to visit relatives in Seattle--at least not if airplanes were involved.
Instead, the mother of two dragged her husband, Len, to John Wayne Airport in Orange County two days after the worst terrorist attack against the United States and demanded he cancel their tickets.
“I’m not going, and neither are you,” said Gwen Balducci, 51, shooing him toward the Delta Airlines counter. “It’s craziness. There’ll be no planes, period.”
Such anxiety over flying in the wake of attacks in New York and Washington is precisely what travel agents fear could deliver a severe blow to an already teetering industry.
Even though travel agents say vacation bookings are continuing to dribble in, a survey of 800 travelers this week found more than a third plan to cancel leisure trips because of Tuesday’s events, and 38% said they will call off business trips.
Nearly 70% said they will opt to drive rather than fly whenever possible. Indeed, the Automobile Club of Southern California has reported a surge in requests for TripTiks, customized driving maps for members taking road trips.
That’s what the Balduccis of Dana Point were considering Friday, although no arrangements had been made.
“I doubt I’ll ever get her on an airplane again,” Len Balducci, a mechanical engineer, said with a sigh. “She heard people are still getting arrested in airports, and that was all it took.”
It’s an ominous signal for an industry already staggered by cutbacks in business travel during an economic slowdown. Companies will be reducing their business trips in light of the attacks and airport bottlenecks from stiff new security procedures, officials said. Numerous businesses are expected to eliminate all but essential air travel out of concerns for workers’ safety.
Until now, leisure travel had been holding up fairly well. Not long ago, economists were saying tourism--especially in California--was helping to keep the cooling economy from stalling. Travel and leisure industries account for about 6% of the U.S. economy and have 7.8 million employees, according to the Travel Industry Assn. of America.
In fact, some travel agents say they have continued to book leisure trips for next month, the holidays and well into the new year. AAA travel officials said sales of Hawaiian vacation packages are as popular as ever.
Such responses have surprised some industry experts, prompting them to wonder, however cautiously, just how much leisure travel will suffer after all, said Peter Yesawich, chief executive of Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown, an Orlando, Fla.-based marketing firm that conducted the travel survey.
“Frankly, I thought [the numbers] would be considerably more negative in light of the tragedy earlier this week,” Yesawich said. “For the most part, people intend to keep on traveling.”
Others say it’s far too early to tell. They predict further spikes in cancellations as travelers assess the tragedy and follow developments that are likely to affect them. Some warned that the result will prove worse than the travel scare from the Persian Gulf War in 1991, which lasted several weeks and caused airlines to lose $7.6 billion.
Since Tuesday, airlines and hotels have scrambled to establish more liberal cancellation policies. Some airlines offered to refund tickets over the next several weeks, and Southwest Airlines said it will fully refund any ticket for any travel date. Hilton Hotels offered to extend by two weeks its policy concerning individual cancellation and “no-show” fees as well as early departures at its hotels in the United States.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen next week or next month, but I think our industry’s going to take a huge nose dive,” said Lawrence Simon, who manages Mission Bell Travel in Mission Viejo. “I can’t imagine people would want to go anywhere for a long while. What’s happened is different than anything we’ve ever seen before. I’m saying, ‘Get your money back and stay home.’ ”
He didn’t have to tell John Terry twice. The retired grocery executive asked Simon this week to cancel a South American cruise he had planned with his wife for the first 16 days in December. The Coto de Caza couple were to fly to Rio de Janeiro--something that didn’t sit well with the Terrys.
“With all of the international uncertainty we have right now, flying overseas isn’t worth the risk,” Terry said. “Sticking close to home and putting up our Christmas tree seemed like a much better idea instead.”
Ricci Zukerman, who runs six travel agencies in Southern California, including Palm Springs, for Worldview Travel, said the mood among travelers so far is more optimistic than during the Gulf War.
“It’s like people are refusing to let this interfere with the business of living,” she said. “Most of our cancellations haven’t been because they don’t want to go, but because the airlines can’t accommodate them now.”
That was the case for Morgan Barrows and Anthony Pichardo, who planned to fly Tuesday from John Wayne Airport for a seven-day honeymoon in Rome and Venice. In light of the attack, the earliest Continental Airlines could get them there would have been the end of the month--too late for the newlyweds’ vacation schedules.
“We would have gone, no problem,” said Barrows, 28, a graduate student at UC Irvine. “We would have gone the very next day if we could. Fear of flying wasn’t the issue at all, because we don’t believe in living our lives in fear.”
Several factors will still determine traveler sentiment through year’s end, Yesawich said, from additional terrorist threats to whether there’s a meltdown in financial markets.
“The good news for the travel industry is that memories are relatively short,” he said. “It’s going to take some time, but people will begin to forget.”
Times staff writer Leslie Earnest contributed to this report.
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