Local travel professionals say business has dried up
By Rebecca Ray
Saratoga hotels and travel agencies thought they had it rough around Labor Day. Little did they know that on Sept. 11, terrorists would hijack four commercial airline flights, thousands of people would lose their lives and the air travel industry in the United States would come to a screeching halt.
George Oberle, owner and manager of the travel agency WesTrav International, 18562 Prospect Road, says he's seen "mass cancellations" of leisure trips. Now he sees almost strictly business travel. Although he says it's too early to tell how much business travel has decreased since Sept. 11, he estimates it has declined about 40 percent.
Oberle thinks people will travel for pleasure again only when the government stations the National Guard at checkpoints or places sky marshals in planes. Only then, he said, would members of the public feel secure enough to fly. "Until that happens, the airlines are going to suck wind, and the rest of the travel industry as a result," he said.
Lynda Turley, owner of Alpine Travel of Saratoga, 18798 Cox Ave., sees things differently. On Sept. 11, and for a few days afterward, many people canceled their flights, but only because all flights were grounded, she said. She hasn't seen many people cancel trips taking place in late September and afterward. According to Turley, flights, resorts and cruise ships are booked from Christmas to New Year's Day, like they were last year.
Turley said, however, leisure trips booked outside the United States, from now until the end of the year, are down 10 to 20 percent from the same time period last year. People are canceling their trips to Europe and replacing them with trips to Alaska, Hawaii and Canada, she said.
Turley attributes the desire to stay closer to home to patriotism and mostly to the economic downturn. Since Sept. 11, many clients have told her they preferred to spend money in the United States rather than in other countries--a phenomenon that occurred after the Persian Gulf War. Fear of flying has only played a tiny role in cancellations because of increased airline security, she said.
For Lea Ann Hernandez, owner of Saratoga Oaks Lodge, 14626 Big Basin Way, business suffered for the first 10 days after the attack. But since then, it has increased. Hernandez said she thinks this has to do with people returning to their normal lives and losing their fear of flying, "plus the fact that they don't want to be dictated to by terrorists," she said.
Local hotels and travel agencies have fought against the economic downturn all year. To save money, people have chosen not to travel, and companies have sent fewer employees on excursions, causing hotels and travel agencies to look for other ways to boost business.
At the beginning of the year, leisure travel remained relatively unaffected because laid-off workers thought they would have short breaks before finding new jobs, Oberle said. But since then, they realized it would take longer to find new jobs and became less willing to spend money, said Oberle.
Linda Bull, owner of Saratoga Travel Inc., 14479 Big Basin Way, said business had only slowed somewhat before Sept. 11 because of lowered airfares, cruise prices and hotel rates, and because of lower prices among wholesalers in general. According to Bull, travel this summer remained steady compared to last summer. She said, however, if it hadn't been for the downturn, travel probably would have increased 5 to 10 percent.
Corporate travel decreased even more than leisure travel, said Bull. At the beginning of the year, it was down 25 percent. But after May, she said, it began to increase.
According to Hernandez, business at the lodge had slowed a little since 2000. The number of business personnel staying at the lodge had dwindled to about half the amount who stayed there the year before, said residential manager Karen Packett.
But, Packett added, this had little effect on the hotel, since business personnel were also staying longer. Business employees who traveled somewhere Friday night stayed there after Saturday night, rather than going home on Saturday during the day, because they received discounts on tickets for Saturday night stays, Oberle said.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
