By Andrea Harwood
The cost of vacation travel has gone up significantly. But Dawn Biddiscombe, owner and operator of Premier Plus Travel & Tours in Glens Falls, has seen an increase in business and says people are willing to pay the price.
“People are paying more now without questioning price”, said Biddiscombe.
Travelers know that prices are expected to be higher than ever, especially considering the cost of gasoline and diesel fuel, she said. In previous years, clients may have taken time to think over the cost of trips. Now, they book trips as they come available because of an inventory shortage.
“Everyone wants to travel,” said Biddiscombe. “Popular places are in Europe right now. It used to be Mexico and the Caribbean, which is still somewhat popular. Now, people want to do something more unique.”
Stacie Baxter, sales manager at Heber Travel Services in Queensbury, sees a high demand for travel as well.
“People are going everywhere,” she said. “I’m doing a lot of planning for Africa and South America for the end of the winter months.”
Biddiscombe said Europe is struggling to keep up with travel demand. Ireland, Greece and Italy, including the Maltese Coast, are all in demand as travel destinations. Spain is also one of the top requests. She has people asking to go for longer stays, and they are willing to pay more money.
“The frustrations I see lies not so much with the increased cost of air fare, but more so with the air delays,” she said. “Everyone’s getting hours more of unexpected wait time at the airport, or even having to spend the night. Everyone blames employment shortages within the airline. That’s going to be used as an excuse for awhile. The truth is, I think companies are trying to recoup costs by hiring less people.”
“Once you’re told ‘no, no, no’ on something you want, you just want it more. People have been waiting to go places, and people are ready to travel now,” she said.
In previous years, an airline may reduce prices as departure date gets closer in order to fill seats. Biddiscombe said she doesn’t see as many dips in airline fares as in the past. If travelers wait to make their plans, hotels book up and airline fares will almost certainly increase.
As far as airports go, Biddiscombe says the Philadelphia International Airport () is the worst to fly in or out of. She said her clients consistently experience problems with service, cancellations, delays and rudeness among various airline staff.
Biddiscombe said Charlotte Douglas International Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport are both very good, particularly for layovers. Nonstop flights out of Newark Liberty International Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City also tend to be trouble-free.
“Instead of having one night out or going to lake house for a couple days, we’re getting a lot of requests for four to five daylong bachelor and bachelorette parties,” she said.
Destination weddings are also on the rise. Biddiscombe is currently working on a destination wedding in Mexico with a guest list of 90 people and growing.
“People want to have fun now,” she said, after being curtailed because of the pandemic for two years. “I think now they’re rebelling. They just want to do things. They don’t mind the cost.”
Baxter agreed with the popularity of Europe right now, particularly with cruises and guided tours. Labor shortages in European are part of the problem. Airports in Amsterdam and London in particular are “a mess”, she said. The struggle seems to be finding workers to come in for jobs like baggage handling and reservation taking. Those are issues with the airport, not the airline.
Baxter said about half of travelers choose a guided tour as a means of taking in Europe. More young people are doing point-to-point travel and foreign independent tours, she said. People are picking a short tour or cruise, then tack on extra time to do their own thing.
“People are willing to travel to nearly any destination right now,” Baxter said. “When we said, ‘Stop, you can’t do it’ during COVID, it was like taking candy away from a child. Now people can go anywhere. And they are happy.”
“People are spending the money. With all the financial changes the last couple years, people are saying, ‘Okay, we’ve saved money, we’re gonna do it now and worry about what happens next month,” said Baxter.
Anne Gordon, owner and president of Live Life Travel in Saratoga Springs, said one of the biggest challenges is helping people understand how much travel costs.
“The saying about having a champagne taste on a beer budget – that is often true with travel if you aren’t accustomed to how much it costs,” she said.
Gordon, like Biddiscombe and Baxter, said Europe is in high demand for travelers. Tour operators in particular are in high demand, and private drivers are a scarcity at the moment. Unless a traveler is setting up something with a hotel that has their own in-house drivers reserved for their room specifically, private driver companies are overbooked and hard to come by.
“Travel agents and planners went into this year knowing that there were essentially two years of pent up demand for travel. When 2020 happened, we negotiated the refunding of 100 percent of our clients’ money. It was close to $1,000,000. But what most companies did was shift those deposits and funds to 2021, which also saw massive cancellations and shifted the funds once more to 2022,” said Gordon.