Vacations are getting shorter and staying closer to home, new data from the Web site NileGuide.com suggests.
Here’s the average trip length from November to May. There’s a clear downward trend, from eight days to five. What accounts for the spike in December? Maybe it was the preponderance of cruise bargains around that time.
During the same time, travelers seem to be staying closer to home in an apparent effort to save money. For example, California is a favorite destination for … Californians. Can you say “staycation”?
Here’s what Nileguide’s chief executive, Josh Steinitz, saw in the numbers.
Since the crash of last fall, it has fallen 36% from 8.05 days to 5.12 days in May — quite an astounding decrease over such a short period.
We looked at users in specific metro areas to find out if the recession was keeping travelers closer to home. Unsurprisingly, it was. However, the scale of the change was again quite dramatic. For example, our users in the LA region spent 33 percent of their time looking for travel information in other parts of California in May, vs only 4 percent last fall.
At this rate, we’ll soon be going nowhere on vacation.
