Since 9/11, the emergence of the Teflon tourist

WHEN terrorists seized passenger jets on Sept. 11, 2001, and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in suburban Washington, D.C., they could not have fully imagined the consequences.

Four years later, what is remarkable is this: Despite the terrible deaths and injuries, economic damage and the tightening of air security, no one anticipated the most lasting effects on the American traveler.

The attacks helped forge a new U.S. tourist: bold, Internet savvy and more family focused. True, we avoided travel for a while. But if the terrorists had hoped to forever keep us from roaming the globe, they failed. Miserably.

More Americans traveled to foreign lands last year than at any time in history, according to U.S. government statistics released last month. Most of our nearly 62 million foreign visits were to Mexico and Canada. But 27 million of us went overseas -- a record, up 12% from 2003.

Domestic travel is setting records too. Although many airline companies are drowning in red ink because of fuel prices, low-cost competition and other challenges, they don’t lack for customers these days. More of us are flying than ever. Through July of this year, U.S. airlines logged more revenue passenger miles -- a measure of overall traffic -- than at any time in history, on both domestic and foreign routes. (See the accompanying chart, Page 3.)

Throughout the U.S., hotels in top markets are, on average, operating nearly as full as they were in 2000, a record year in the industry. They are on track to charge the highest-ever average rates in 2005 -- more than $106 per night -- according to forecasts by PKF Consulting, an international firm of consultants and specialists in the hotel and tourism industries.

Meanwhile, hotels in Manhattan, ground zero of the 9/11 tragedy, are filling nearly 85% of their rooms, surpassing the record year of 2000, PKF said; room rates are nearing 2000 levels.

Although business travel still isn’t at 2000 levels, “leisure travel is back with a vengeance,” said Peter Yesawich, president and chief executive of Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell, a Florida-based marketing firm that cosponsors annual surveys of U.S. travel consumers.

But we’re not the same travelers we were four years ago.

“The events of 9/11 changed the travel industry forever in a manner that no one forecast or anticipated,” Yesawich said.

Among the biggest transformations traceable to 9/11, in his view: Tourists discovered the Internet, put a higher priority on their families and became less skittish about dangers abroad. Here’s a closer look:

* Web travel: Although consumers in significant numbers had been online for several years by then, many more rushed into cyberspace in the months after the attacks, which sent travel receipts into a tailspin.

The reason? Desperate to drum up business, Yesawich said, airlines and hotels drastically dropped prices and e-mailed the deals to customers. Travel sellers couldn’t afford the weeks it took for mailings to get results.

The word went out: Go online for cheap trips.

“Finding a great deal on an airfare or hotel for the very first time on the Internet ... is like pulling a slot machine and hitting the jackpot,” Yesawich said. “There’s this huge ‘aha!’ and people go back.”

In just six months, from January through June 2002, visits to Internet travel sites grew by 15%, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, an Internet media and market research firm whose U.S. headquarters are in New York. Later more airlines, hotels, tour operators and, finally, cruise lines put their products online.

Today, more than 60% of American vacationers use the Internet, either alone or in conjunction with a travel agent, to plan trips, according to the 2005 National Leisure Travel Monitor, one of the annual surveys that Yesawich’s company conducts with Yankelovich Partners. Many also book them online.

* Family focus: More of us take trips as a family today, with two or even three generations hitting the road together.

Since 2000, the number of American vacationers who said they traveled with children during the previous year has increased by 46%, according to the National Leisure Travel Monitor. A third of grandparents took grandchildren along, the survey found.

Responding to the demand, tour operators have devised multi-generation itineraries; all-suite hotels are hot; cruise ships are adding interconnected cabins. Despite high gas prices, family-friendly RV travel has been thriving.

Maybe we’re so pressed for time, with longer workweeks, that we turn to trips for togetherness. And in times of crisis, people traditionally look homeward.

Yesawich said his surveys suggested another cause: a seismic shift in our mind-set.

In the affluent 1990s, money was an obsession. But after the uncertainties of 9/11 and the economic downturn, “we became very introspective as a society,” he said. “Family ascended to the top of the list of priorities.”

* Getting beyond the tragedy: Few things could inspire more dread of travel than witnessing the horrific images of 9/11.

But we moved beyond it.

It’s true that passenger traffic on U.S. carriers fell 43% in September 2001 over the previous month. But it soon started increasing.

In the last four years, we have returned to the skies in fits and starts, jolted by the SARS epidemic in Asia and the outbreak of the Iraq war and slowed by the headwinds of recession -- which actually started months before the 9/11 attacks.

Although we still don’t go to some areas as frequently as we once did -- Europe, for instance, received about a million fewer U.S. visitors last year than in 2000, a record year -- overall, we’ve returned to flying at record levels.

And with each trauma, we seem to get more inured to fear and uncertainty -- and even more determined to travel. We’ve become Teflon tourists.

After the Iraq war started in 2003, it took only four weeks for travel to start rebounding, Yesawich said.

U.S. bookings to Spain barely registered a blip in the days after bombers killed nearly 200 people in March 2004 attacks on trains in the Madrid area, travel agents said then.

Tours and cruises to Libya and Kenya are booming despite recent State Department advisories that warn Americans to “exercise caution” in Libya and to “carefully consider the risks of travel to Kenya at this time due to ongoing safety and security concerns.”

When I visited LAX shortly before the Labor Day weekend, some passengers told me they hadn’t cut back on travel since Sept. 11, 2001. They complained about the hassles of security, and having to head for the airport hours before a flight. But forgoing trips wasn’t on the table.

“We probably travel more now,” said Brian Jones of Pasadena, waiting in line with his wife, Nada, and their two small children to fly to Colorado for the holiday.

The Sept. 11 attacks “increased my anxiety level,” he added, “but that’s about it.”

He said he worried more about an equipment malfunction when flying than he did about terrorism.

A year ago, the family went to Egypt, part of a region that some travelers have avoided in the last few years.

“We’re not the fearing type,” Nada said.

Ron and Sherrie Shadron of Buena Park were also waiting in line at LAX that day. Like the Joneses, they had booked their trip on the Internet: an air-hotel package to Hawaii that totaled just $1,000 for four nights for both.

Sherrie had long used a travel agent to plan her annual cruise vacation. Not anymore. Her son booked their upcoming Mexico cruise on the Web.

But one thing hasn’t changed for the Shadrons in these last four years: They take vacations as often as ever, several times a year.

As for terrorism, Ron said: “If it happens, it happens. You can’t let it affect what you do.”

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

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Air travel recovers

These figures represent revenue passenger miles, a measure of air traffic volume. For consistency, the figures represent domestic and international traffic January through July of each year. Figures are in millions of miles.

1999 360.15

2000 384.81

2001 388.40

2002 351.35

2003 342.92

2004 381.68

2005 404.14

Source: Air Transport Assn. Monthly Passenger Traffic Report