TRAVEL INDUSTRY Vacationers favor road trips, cruises

Few Americans are going abroad, travel experts say.
BY VALERIE BANNER
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Ralph Goodge canceled a trip to Europe.
But that was years ago, he said, when bombs were going off in Frankfurt, the city in which his plane was supposed to land.
This year, however, Goodge said he hasn't let fear keep him from traveling.
Goodge, 70, of Austintown, recently returned from Hilton Head, S.C., a trip he took with his wife to visit her sister. In September, Goodge said he plans to go to Europe for a World War II tour.
"If you were to cancel trips every time you are worried about something happening, you'd never go anywhere," said Goodge, who took a plane to Hilton Head.
National outlook
Goodge is just one of many local people refusing to stay home after the events of Sept. 11, say local travel agents. They say people will be traveling as much as ever this summer, although travelers may be heading to different locations.
Dru Winings, district office manager, AAA Travel in Boardman, said travel came to a screeching halt for about three months after the terrorist strikes. Now she's noticed more and more families planning vacations together, she said.
"People are saying travel is down; it's just different. Agents are used to doing a lot of international travel during the summer," Winings said, noting that this summer, people seem to prefer to travel domestically.
She said visiting national parks out West, such as the Grand Canyon, and going on the Disney cruise seem to be especially popular among families this summer.
"People still feel safe on a cruise ship," she said. "It's safe and contained."
Feeling safe
Charles Petzinger, president of Pan Atlas Travel Service, which has four offices in the Mahoning Valley, said he has seen an increase in cruises as well.
He said cruises to Alaska and Hawaii are doing especially well. He speculated that it might be because travelers would rather stay on American soil, but are still looking to go someplace exotic.
"Almost no one is going to Europe," he said. "People just don't want to be abroad and identified as an American tourist."
While people may be staying in their homeland this summer, they are not staying at home, he said.
Since modern families view vacations more as a right than a privilege, he said he's done "more bookings of just the hotel. More people are on the road -- physically on the road -- driving this summer."
Rail, bus
Petzinger said he's also seen an increase of people traveling by train. "Rail travel is up. I've sold more Amtrak," he said.
Bus travel is up too, said Joyce Sutton, an owner of Sutton's Tourist and Travel Inc., Boardman.
"As far as activity goes, the buses took a big hit for a while too, don't kid yourself," she said. "But the bus tours are really up."
However, she said, travelers aren't staying out of the air altogether.
There's one hot spot that people will never avoid.
"Vegas will always be up. People who are flying are going there," Sutton said.
Some aren't afraid
She said she's also noticed that more experienced travelers are more willing to fly.
"The more knowledgeable people are, the more they've traveled, the more they want to go," she said.
Goodge, whose list of places to which he's traveled reads like a world atlas, said he's flown so many times he doesn't worry about it anymore.
"Flying doesn't bother me much," he said. "You're actually more likely to get killed in the streets anymore. ... There's so many things that could happen that if you worried about them all, you'd get gray hair awful quick."
Air travel
David Powers, manager at James World of Travel, Youngstown, said he's selling just as many airline tickets as he always has, even though "airfares are at an all-time high."
"Six months ago, people who told me they'd never fly again are coming in and buying plane tickets," he said.
He said he doesn't think many travelers are avoiding airlines out of fear.
"More than being afraid, it's the inconvenience of going through the airport security. I don't see much of a decrease in the number of people flying, but they are complaining about the inconvenience of flying," Powers said.