The AAA Travel Services Research department recently released projections for domestic holiday travel. Travel projections to Florida were not available, but AAA Travel Services did make some national projections based on a 1,350 household survey conducted by IHS Global Insight.
The AAA survey results prognosticate a 3.8% increase in holiday travelers for the 2009 holiday season. This is contrasted by an actual 4.7% drop for the 2008 holiday period vs. 2007 numbers. Although any growth in travel to Florida is welcome, the projected numbers would only roughly bring us back to 2007 levels.
Travel by air is expected to increase by 2.9% domestically and 3.2% for Orlando. According to the Greater Orlando Airport Authority, holiday air travel to and from Orlando will peak on January 2, 2010. Due to decreases in available airline seat capacity nationally, this may ultimately lead to higher airline ticket prices. Although this is true nationally, the good news for Orlando is that many carriers have actually added direct airline flights to Florida. We blogged about the positive development for more direct flights to Orlando on a recent post.
