Is Travel Going South?

There’s a mildly entertaining (and slightly scary) post I found, called 8 Things Travelers Should Expect in 2008. It holds no bars and gives us the down and out ugly. Increased gasoline and airlines prices, longer lines, more fees and taxes (no surprise to us in New York), and more gridlock. And the nonsense pushed on travelers by greedy, lying companies trying to steal us out of a buck. Check this!

Higher energy prices always send travel companies into an opportunistic frenzy. In December, the cruise line Star Clippers slapped an $8 fuel surcharge on future bookings. There’s just one little problem: Star Clippers operates a fleet of sailing ships. The Jamaica Hotel & Tourist Association in December also encouraged its members to impose an energy surcharge on its guests because of “the ever-increasing price of crude oil and the consequent threat to the profitability of hotel businesses.” Huh? Since when is crude oil — or any kind of fossil fuel — used to power a hotel? Point is, the fees often have little or nothing to do with the actual energy costs of the cruise line, hotel or airline. If they can get away with it, they will (and they are).

This sounds like a job for Chuck Schumer, to combat this new evil scourge of hotel room gouging and sailboat gouging.

Seriously, I shake my head, dismayed that crooked companies would stoop so low to rob us blind; yet this is so predictable. I’d like to hope that travelers would fight back and refuse to give their money to such sheisters; but consumers are so predictable, too. I am always surprised at how much the consumer will tolerate to get his goods. As with the preposterous and embarrassing “security” checks at airports and border points, as with the outrageous gasoline prices filling millions of SUV tanks, as with endless and mindless surcharges on everything from toilet paper to energy use, I really have to wonder if the traveling consumer will finally put his foot down and say ‘no more of this.’ Actually, I lost faith with the consumer with the toleration of those airport x-ray machines that expose a traveler’s every naked crevice. As for me: No thanks; I’ll stay in New York.

These restraints can only bode well for the short-term, local traveler (aka, me!). There’s a lot to discover within one’s own region. I always hear talk about how travelers will “save” the world, but how about saving your neighbor or your neighborhood? It’s pretty easy to make small talk and hand out care packages to strangers in Australia or Thailand; how about on Main Street? If anything, economic restraints can be a blessing, making us have communities again. It’s like I’d said when I first started my blogs on New York travel: everybody blogs about world travel– why not blog about local travel? This may become the new trend, especially if the traveling consumer finally puts his foot down. If.