KANSAS CITY, Mo. ‒ Susan Ewer watched her children play in the playground inside the Kansas City airport, burning off energy for what promised to be a marathon travel day: flying to Ireland.
Seven members of her family were leaving Kansas City, meeting three others in Chicago, for the jet trip across the Atlantic. They planned to spend 10 days driving around the Emerald Isle, meeting long-lost cousins at local pubs. They were supposed to go in 2020, but the pandemic ruined everything, and this was the first chance they’d all had to travel together since then.
“A lot of people say we’re crazy, but I’m really optimistic,” she said.
Like millions of Americans, Ewer’s clan is taking big summer vacations this year, fueled in part by pent-up demand from COVID-19 but also funded in part by a booming stock market and rising wages. Airports are reporting record travel, and analysts say vacationers plan to spend more on their trips even as higher gas prices, interest rates and food costs squeeze their daily spending.
About 60% of Americans plan to take a summer trip this year, about the same as last year, travel experts say. But at the same time, 60% of Americans think the U.S. economy is in recession, according to a new poll, and former President Donald Trump argues that many Americans can’t afford summer travel.
During this presidential election, the economy and inflation are the biggest issues cited by voters, at 35%, with threats to democracy trailing closely behind at 21% and immigration further behind at 19%, according to a July USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll. And while wages and the stock market are on the rise under President Joe Biden, higher fuel and food costs, along with housing affordability, remain a major concern.
“It’s kind of hard to understand how the stock market is doing so well when the economy doesn’t seem to be doing well,” Gary Smith, 54, said recently as he waited for a Southwest flight to Las Vegas. “I can’t wrap my head around it.”
Smith was flying with his wife, daughter, niece and a friend to the Evolution Championship Series, the world’s largest e-sports competition. The long-planned trip was a graduation present for his daughter, he said, and they had saved for years to pay for it.
“It took a little longer to raise the funds,” he said, citing higher living costs. “But as inflation tends to increase, so does our salary. It doesn’t quite keep up, but any extra helps, and it’s a blessing.”
Experts say travelers like the Smiths represent a typical American family going on summer vacation: They know it’s more expensive, but they still go, saving money elsewhere or saving more.
“The fact that people are still prioritizing travel is a shift in the share of the wallet: They’re prioritizing travel, and that’s a structural shift for Americans to prioritize experiences, how they want to spend their time,” said Mike Daher, a longtime travel analyst at the consulting firm Deloitte. “The pandemic has been a reminder that life is short and that people are wanting to prioritize time with loved ones and new experiences.”
Scott Hughes is among those prioritizing travel. As he waited at Denver International Airport with his wife and four children to fly from Alabama to Steamboat Springs, Colo., where they have a second home, Hughes, a real estate developer, said higher interest rates have made deals more expensive. He said they often fly on a friend’s private plane to Colorado, but that it is much cheaper to fly United.
“I’m more concerned than I was last year about the economy, but not overly concerned,” he said.
Rising prices are hitting lower-income families the hardest, with about 19% of families earning $50,000 or less planning to travel this summer, up from 31% last year.
A July USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll showed that Americans, by a margin of 54% to 40%, believe Trump, who is running for reelection, would be better at handling the economy than Biden. The poll was conducted shortly before Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. During the Republican National Convention earlier this month, several speakers said the higher cost of living meant they had to adjust their vacation expectations.
“With Biden and Harris, half of Americans won’t take a vacation this summer because they can’t afford it,” Trump said at a July 9 rally, speaking days after Newsweek released a poll of 2,500 eligible voters that found 44 percent of respondents wouldn’t take a summer trip, and 53 percent said they would have if things were cheaper.
About 32% of Americans said they don’t take a vacation in any given year because they’re “too busy,” according to Expedia’s 24th Annual Vacation Deprivation Report.
Among those who think the economy was better under Trump are Dwain and Kerrie Weinrich of Yuma, Colo. Waiting to board a recent flight to Cabo San Lucas at Denver International Airport, the retired couple were among about 200 people from their small community flying to Mexico for a wedding. They said they prefer Cabo to Cancun because it is cheaper, and they had recently returned from a different wedding in Texas.
“We saved money and now we’re getting it back,” said Jerrie Weinrich, 66, who wondered aloud how young Americans are able to travel. “We didn’t travel like this when we had kids in school.”
Dwain Weinrich, 66, who recently retired as a hog slaughterhouse manager, said they were using a combination of savings, credit card points and stock market gains to pay for the trip. He said they also booked in advance to lock in low prices. Although the stock market is up dramatically under Biden than under Trump, he said they felt the overall economy was more secure before.
“Right now, it’s costing us more to live,” he said.
Mr. Daher, the travel industry analyst, said that Baby Boomers — people ages 60 to 78 — are traveling more this summer than they did last year. Baby Boomers, who make up about 21 percent of the U.S. population, hold half of the country’s wealth, according to NASDAQ officials, and with the stock market surging, their 401Ks and other investments are increasing.
Daher said 34 percent of Baby Boomers planned to travel this summer, up from 28 percent last year. He said Baby Boomers, and travelers in general, understand that vacations will cost more this year. But he said they also anticipate having a better experience as a result.
“They expect to spend more, they have bigger budgets and they have a higher expectation of that experience,” he said. “They want to have a better experience and they’re willing to pay for it.”
Social media is playing a big role, Daher said, with Americans being encouraged to travel by friends and family posting about trips online, from Ally in Peru to Sam in Portugal, Deb in Greece and Eric in Andorra.
Daher said one significant change is that tourists are taking fewer trips this summer, an average of 2.3 compared with 3.1 last year. But he also noted that travelers are flying more, even though experts expected travelers trying to save money to drive.
On the July 4th holiday, for example, AAA estimated that road travel increased by 5%, with more than 60 million people driving more than 50 miles. Air travel on the July 4th holiday Sunday also set an all-time high, with more than 3 million people passing through TSA checkpoints, a 15% increase from 2023.
“People are protecting their longer trips (and) those standout summer vacations have remained pretty steady,” Daher said. “What we’ve seen is a decrease in those short trips and weekend getaways. People are saying they’re planning to do less of those.”
For the Ewer family, the pandemic-delayed trip to Ireland represented years of planning, saving and strategizing. The costs were a bit higher than they had initially planned, in part because several of the children who were scheduled to travel now needed their own seats to fly.
Ewer’s father, Paul Linneman, 71, last visited Ireland more than 30 years ago, when he rode his bike around the island. Now semi-retired, he said savings and investments are helping him fund the adventure. As his daughter played tour guide and worried about making the connecting flight from Chicago to Shannon, Ireland, Linneman watched his grandchildren climb into a pretend airplane at the Kansas City airport and reflected on his hopes for the trip.
“It’s like the best dream you’ve ever had, all these relatives getting together,” he said. “We’re having this great adventure.”
