Travel Traffic not travelling

High Season or not?

[Crush]

Hi guys

Anyone in travel notice a drop in bookings over the last couple of weeks? It is high season right? My hits are stable but there are definately less sales. We had a dodgy Ausgust a couple of years back so I know that it can be a weird month. Just wondering what the concenus is?

[balam]

It is high season right?

I suppose that really depends on where you (or your clients, more accurately) are located...

One of my sites is travel-related (for a specific location) and my traffic patterns basically follow industry trends: North American visitors looking to travel during the Northern Hemisphere winter, European visitors during the (NH) summer. (Yay! The site's busy year-round!) (The destination I promote does get visitors from the Eastern Hemisphere, but the interest in the East isn't as great as the West.)

It's not an e-commerce site, so I can't comment there (re: bookings), but I'll ask this: Do you think it could have anything to do with the invasion of Iraq? It's plainly obvious that the travelling public gets extremely nervous during war time - witness the global airline carrier bankruptcies...

What about the growing sentiment of not travelling to/through the USA? I mean, who wants to be fingerprinted, photographed and databased as part of their vacation?! (This applies to all foreign nationals who travel to, or via, the USA and will be fully implemented by the end of this year.)

I for one, will never put a willing foot on American soil again. And while they aren't coming fast 'n' furious, links to my "avoiding the USA while flying" page are steadily increasing.

I personally suspect that a lot of American e-commerce webmasters are standing on ice - thick ice, but the temperature's rising. And with the growing anti-Americanism, I wouldn't be surprised to see travel sites being the first to fall through...

[edited by: oilman at 6:46 pm (utc) on July 30, 2003]

[rcjordan]

Mid-Atlantic states reporting in strong, strong, strong. Also doing well in the Rockies.

[Travel]

it is high season and we are seeing high season numbers

[DrCool]

Traffic and sales are strong on my end. Seeing some of my best numbers ever.

[Rumbas]

June/july was great, great, great from a european perspective. Traffic however is going down a bit, but official vacation time is over here, so that's expected.

[Mardi_Gras]

We're seeing a significant decrease. Summer was slower than usual, and August, while usually slow, is officially "dead."

The good news for us at least is that the fall looks pretty good. We get a lot of convention travel in New Orleans in the fall, and that business seems less affected than our summer travel, which is more vacation travelers using their own money.