Fourth of July Travel Changes : Kathika Travel Website

By Amanda Kendle

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With the Fourth of July here again, things are looking a little bit different on the travel scene if you compare it to the same holiday season in other years: and our ol’ friend, rising gas prices, can take most of the blame for that. Since the Fourth of July in 2007, the average price of a gallon of gas has risen by 38.5 per cent, a massive rise which is impacting all parts of society, but travel is especially hard hit.

This Fourth of July, more people are staying home rather than traveling to visit family and friends or to take a vacation. The AAA made an estimate that the number of people traveling over this holiday season will fall by 1.3 per cent compared to last year, and that’s the first time in ten years that this figure has gone down.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the latest figures show that the biggest fall in travelers is among people who usually make their trip by car. Rising costs of fuel have made 12 per cent of people who would ordinarily drive somewhere for a Fourth of July vacation stay home instead. The vast majority of travelers over the Fourth of July weekend do usually travel by car – some surveys put the figure at around 80 per cent – so a fall in the number of people taking the car makes a big dent in the number of holidaymakers going anywhere for the holiday.

There are still plenty of passengers traveling by air but the industry experts are predicting that this is only because many of the airlines’ new charges and fees don’t kick in until after Labor Day, so perhaps it will be next Fourth of July when we also see a large drop in air traffic over the holiday weekend.

As well as canceling holiday plans, another survey showed that a big proportion of Americans have changed their Fourth of July plans to make them cheaper, given the rising costs of travel. A CNN poll found that 31 per cent of Americans have either canceled or shortened their plans for the holiday weekend because of the increase in the price of gas.

The extra sad thing about the holiday celebrations this year is that budgetary limits have also led to some towns canceling or minimizing their fireworks displays, so if you stay home and think you can still get some of the holiday atmosphere, you have to hope that’s not the case where you live.