Half of American workers don’t plan to travel this summer poll finds

Half of American workers won’t be going on a summer vacation this year due to the high cost of living according to a poll from Newsweek which revealed some startling statistics. 

Redfield & Wilton Strategies was commissioned by Newsweek to conduct a poll of 1500 eligible American voters, and it revealed some worrying signs about the current economy.

The survey found that 49% of respondents weren’t planning on traveling within the next three months but would have gone somewhere if the cost of travel wasn’t a major factor. 

The poll found 12% of people surveyed said they had wanted to travel abroad while a further 31% responded they would have traveled domestically and 9% would have done both.

Newsweek noted the high cost of living played a “major role” in the decision not to travel for most respondents and it even played a role for those surveyed who were traveling. 

Affordability affected the choice of 60% of the people who planned to travel this summer and 52% chose to go to a cheaper destination than they would have originally visited. 

Another 48% of respondents who said they were traveling also noted they were planning to travel for a shorter number of days than originally intended, meaning everyone seems to be worried about money. 

Travel & Leisure’s Alison Fox pointed out this trend in an April 23rd article analyzing the results from a similar survey by Bankrate showing inflation was canceling summer fun. 

In Bankrate's survey, 58% of adults surveyed said they weren’t going away because of money reasons, which was up from last year's Bankrate poll that found 48% of people didn’t plan to travel. 

Bankrate also found that a whopping 80% of people who did still plan to travel this summer were thinking about the cost of their trip and changing their plans based on the prices. 

“There’s a cumulative toll to both inflation and the higher interest rates that are meant to combat it,” Bankrate Senior Analyst Ted Rossman was quoted as saying by Bankrate in a post on its website about the survey. 

“Prices were rising much faster last year at this time, but fewer travelers were adjusting their plans. Last year was also notable for the tremendous pent-up demand,  that was unleashed as COVID-19 restrictions and concerns began to ease,” Rossman added. 

Bankrate also found that people who were making more money were more likely to be traveling this summer, an unsurprising result but one that reinforced existing beliefs about life in America.

Elise Gould is an economist with the Washington-based non-profit Economic Policy Institute and she told Newsweek that low-income workers don’t usually vacation. 

​​"Vacation time in this country is incredibly skewed towards people with higher incomes, so that it is much less likely that somebody who makes lower wages gets it," Gould said. 

"About 95 percent of the highest-wage workers actually do get paid vacation days and only 44 percent—less than half—of lower-wage workers get any paid vacation days,” Gould added. 

If money issues are what's stopping most Americans from traveling this year then it should give the broader society some pause as we look towards what seems like an uncertain economic future.