Travel Boom

Report Outline
Resumption of Large-Scale Tourist Traffic
Big-Business Status of Tourist Industry
Current Travel Trends Among Americans
Special Focus

Resumption of Large-Scale Tourist Traffic

Release of pent-Up Vacation and travel demands

Advent of the vacation season has provided abundant evidence that the greatest travel boom in American history is rapidly developing. Although overseas pleasure travel will continue to be held in check for many months by transportation shortages and other dislocations resulting from the war, domestic tourist traffic is already hitting new all-time peaks. Demands of would-be vacation travelers greatly exceed the supply of transportation and resort facilities.

Surveys conducted since the end of the war furnish a basis for anticipating continued expansion of the tourist industry. Prospects in store for the numerous enterprises profiting from vacation travel were indicated by a recent poll of members of the American Automobile Association. No less than 62 per cent of those participating in the poll reported that they expected to travel greater distances on vacation trips than before the war; 49 per cent expected to spend more money for vacations; 46 per cent said they would take longer vacations; and 44 per cent planned to take more frequent vacations.

Pressure of war work, gasoline rationing, and admonitions by the government and the transportation companies to save travel space for members of the armed forces and for civilians taking necessary journeys, put a brake on the natural wanderlust of the American people during the war. A survey among the readers of Collier's magazine a few months ago disclosed that 31 per cent of those responding to the questionnaire had taken their last unrestricted vacation in 1941, and that another 31 per cent had not taken such a vacation for an even longer period. It is obvious that a substantial majority of Americans have been saving up vacation plans for five years or more and are now ready and anxious to take long-deferred trips.