Are we going or not? Some say overseas tourism has returned

Our bags are packed, and we’re ready to go abroad again.

War worries? Terrorist bombings? Money issues? No matter.

Exit the timid tourist. Enter the Teflon tourist.

That’s the scenario, tour operators and travel agents say, as spring brings a bumper crop of international bookings by Americans. We’re even going to Europe, despite the powerful British pound, expensive euro and recent bombings in Madrid.

More evidence of our lust for travel: The State Department is busily cranking out passports. It shipped nearly 13% more from October to February than in the same period the year before, the first significant increase since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said Kelly Shannon, spokesman for the department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs. (Passports don’t perfectly predict Americans’ interest in travel because they may be issued for other purposes, such as identification or to replace lost documents, she said.)

There are some who question this trend, especially for long-haul trips; I’ll get to one of them later. But the popular view is positive.

“This is shaping up to be a banner year,” said Steve Loucks, spokesman for Carlson Wagonlit Travel Associates, a nationwide network of travel agencies. “Demand is growing exponentially.” As an apparent result, “overall, pricing is going up,” he said.

International bookings, many of Carlson’s member agencies said, are as strong or stronger than they were before the 2001 terrorist attacks that sent the industry into a tailspin, Loucks said. Nearly two-thirds of the agencies said bookings to Europe were up this year over last.

“Europe is looking very, very good,” said John Dekker, president of Carlson Wagonlit Travel-Willem Daisy Inc. in Huntington Beach. “It’s starting to get a bit tight on deep-discounted [transatlantic] air fares for early June.”

Although it was too early to predict peak summer demand, online travel agencies Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz reported higher European bookings so far this year than last. Some areas in Europe are up as much as 30%, said Amy Ziff, editor at large for Travelocity.

Remarkably, even the devastating train bombings in Madrid didn’t seem to dampen Americans’ enthusiasm for the Continent.

Orbitz saw no decline in European bookings after the March 11 attacks, spokeswoman Terri Shank said. Five days after the bombings, Tauck World Discovery, a tour and cruise operator that’s based in Norwalk, Conn., said it had logged 42 bookings and only three cancellations on its itineraries that included Spain.

In a survey, more than half the Carlson Wagonlit agents who deal with Spain said the bombings did not affect their business.

“Are we all just getting thick-skinned?” travel agent Dekker mused.

Possibly so.

Travelocity’s Ziff called the rebound in wanderlust “a return to the ‘new norm.’ ”

After more than two years of travel concerns and outright calamities -- the Sept. 11 bombings, stepped-up air security, the SARS outbreak in Asia, the Iraq war, the decline of the dollar and the uncertainties of the U.S. economy -- resigned Americans have come to feel “this is the state of the world, and I’m still going to travel,” said Ziff, based on Travelocity’s bookings and polls her company has conducted.

The surge in bookings, Ziff and other experts said, reflects pent-up demand. Fed up with uncertainties, Americans are at last taking the long-distance sojourns they postponed last year or the year before.

We’re returning to the traditional places, plus adding a few more.

So far, London is the top international destination being booked on Travelocity, followed by Cancun, Mexico; Rome; Paris; and Vancouver, Canada, Ziff said.

In questionnaires from Carlson Wagonlit, travel agents identified Caribbean cruising, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica as the top international destinations this year, followed by London.

At Expedia, Britain has been the most popular European destination, followed by Spain, France and Italy, said product manager Melissa Derry.

Together, she said, these four countries attract more Expedia customers than the rest of Europe combined.

But Poland and Portugal bookings are up more than 200% from last year, she added.

Whether American tourists’ enthusiasm for world travel will carry through the year is unclear.

Rob Franklin, chairman of the European Travel Commission, is placing his bets on the Teflon tourist. He expects transatlantic traffic to increase 3% to 5% this year over last.

But Peter Yesawich, managing partner of Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell, Florida-based marketing consultants, is skeptical.

The respected National Leisure Travel Monitor, an annual poll by Yesawich’s company and Yankelovich Partners, turned up plenty of timid tourists, he said.

Only 62% of the 1,350 U.S. leisure travelers interviewed in January and February said they were interested in visiting Europe in the next two years. That’s a significant decrease -- from 68% last year and from 71% in 2002.

“It’s dramatic,” Yesawich said of the drop. He attributed some of the drop to anxiety about international travel.

Among the losers were France, down from 17% to 14% this year as a place we want to visit, and England, down from 21% to 18%.

Interest in going to the Caribbean, the Far East and even Canada faded in this year’s poll.

Yesawich sees us taking fewer long-haul trips overall, mainly because we say we don’t think we can afford them.

He’s unfazed by reports that European bookings are up, attributing them to “positive spin” by a self-interested industry.

As for his own numbers, he said: “We call them as we see them.”

Coffee, tea or ... Teflon? This year will test Americans’ travel resilience.

Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but can’t respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.