Plenty of people still take one and two week vacations. In many cases they are, however, less traditional. They are, as with the example you gave, based around the needs of a particular family member or interest.

However, the trend really has been to taking several shorter 3- and 4-day mini-vacations. There are many reasons for this; social, economic, and the constraints imposed by family life. Indeed, all the reasons you gave have contributed to this trend.

“Camping” of course takes in a lot of ground. Three days in a backcountry tent camp can be a a bit much for many people. That same tent, in a private campground with bath house and other amenities available, is a different sort of trip.

If you find yourself getting ripe after three days in a modern tent, try historic reenacting; living under canvass (or even without that) with no amenities for a week, preparing all food on an open fire using period cookware, etc.

But that’s all grist for a different mill. Right now we’re talking about the dynamics of recreational travel. And the short answer to your question is, yes. It has changed.

I think where the economy of the past two years has affected things is in the number of those shorter trips taken. Certainly 2008′s gas prices and general economy has curtailed them. But I think the signs were apparent even before then. Somebody might take the time off to assemble, say, one or two long weekends a month. But instead of camping, or other recreational travel, those days were used to meet other family obligations: hauling the kids to major activities; working around the house, etc.

What trips were made tended to be closer to home as well. People discovered that there were all sorts of great destinations within their own state, and would visit them, instead of spending half their vacation time driving halfway across the country.

Something that the gas run-up did affect was the nature of travel. There had been a clear trend towards touring. People were bored with the idea of heading to a destination and plopping themselves down for a week or whatever. So we were seeing more and more touring; driving from point to point, and spending only one or two nights in the same spot.

With high gas prices, we’ve seen a return to the idea of sitting in one place.

Brook
http://www.the-outdoor-sports-advisor.com

Brook’s last blog post..Dec 27, Catfishing. Catfish fishing for the Big Fish.

However, shorter weekend trips work well for tent camping. I feel a little grungy after more than 3 nights in a tent. Only challenge is arriving in camp late and having to set up the tent(s) in the dark.

I don’t know if that’s particularly true anymore, Roy. Long before the gas runup of the past two years, there was a pleathera of books based on the “X One Tank Away,” or “X One Day Away” theme.

For ten years, Friend Wife and I wrote the On The Road column in Kentucky Living. It was all about local travel. And was the most popular department in the magazine. I don’t think that was particularly unusual.

There have, to be sure, been some major changes in the dynamics of travel. Starting in the late ’80s, and accelerating through the ’90s, was the idea of not taking long vacations. Instead of a week or two all at once, the on-going trend was to string together long weekends. They’d take off Friday and Monday, for instance, and do that several times during the year. Almost by definition this meant traveling closer to home.

And, of course, it came home to roost the past two years, as we’ve been discussing.

Another change to travel dynamics is the direction people go. This didn’t effect us as travelers, but has had a major effect on travel and hospitality professionals and how they budget their spending.

Used to be a general truism that you could move people southwards and westwards, but not the other way. That is, a travel professional in Kentucky could bring folks in from Ohio and West Virginia, but not from Missouri and Tennessee.

All that has changed, and people in Tennessee are just as likely to vacation in Michigan as in the Ozarks.

Nobody is quite sure what’s behind the change. But I’m sure if we had all the data, both the long-weekends trend, and the economy have played a role.

Brook’s last blog post..Dec 27, Catfishing. Catfish fishing for the Big Fish.

Example: I used to work part time at a motel whose primary business is transiets from southern Canada and the upper Midwest, going to, and returning from Florida. That business hardly suffered—in fact we’d done worse in 2007.

A more cojent example: We spent a long week on the Outer Banks in June. The campgrounds were all full. We only saw two rental units that weren’t occupied.

Everyone complained what a lousy spring it had been. For that period they were down as much as 30%. But—and this supports my contention about short vs long trips—the spring business there is primarily weekenders coming down from Norfolk and Richmond. And last spring, y’all may recall, was lousy weather. Wasn’t a weekend that didn’t rain at least part of the time.

So, while gas prices maybe too the hit for it, there actually were other reasons.

I’m sure the reasoning was, that especially given the price of gas, there was no point in spending a weekend at the shore just to sit and watch the rain.

Brook’s last blog post..Dec 27, Catfishing. Catfish fishing for the Big Fish.

From a consumer spending standpoint, this has been a pretty severe recession. I think a lot of people have put vacations, even short weekend trips, on hold. Time will tell, but I believe we will see things improve this Spring, as uncertainty wains and people feel more comfortable about spending some money.