Earlier this year The Bureau of Labor Statistics at TED: The Editor’s Desk posted a graph on their website showing “Travel expenditures during the recent recession, 2005-2011.” The post stated that 2011 average annual consumer expenditures for travel for pleasure was down 6% from its peak in 2007. When we looked at the data used to generate the graph, we were surprised that it was not inflation-adjusted. Between 2007 and 2011, inflation (the consumer price index) showed that consumer prices had increased by 8.5%.
So to set the record start, we have redone the graph with all expenditures adjusted for inflation and also included 2012 data.
When adjusted for inflation, the drop in travel expenditures was much greater than the Bureau reported. From its peak in 2007, average household total pleasure travel expenses in 2011 were down 14%, not 6%. Food and beverage was down 9%, lodging down 10%, transportation was down 14% and entertainment fees and admissions (from its peak in 2006) were down 21%.
There was an uptick in expenditures in 2012, but travel expenditures are still down from their peaks:
Total travel expenditures: -9% from 2007
Food and beverage: -5% from 2007
Lodging: -10% from 2007
Transportation: -9% from 2007
Entertainment: -20% from 2006
About Randy White
Randy White is CEO and co-founder of the White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group. The 31-year-old company, with offices in Kansas City, Missouri, has worked for over 600 clients in 37 countries throughout the world. Projects the company has designed and produced have won seventeen 1st place awards. Randy is considered to be one of the world's foremost authorities on feasibility, brand development, design and production of leisure experience destinations including entertainment, eatertainment, edutainment, agritainment/agritourism, play and leisure facilities.
Randy was featured on the Food Network's Unwrapped television show as an eatertainment expert, quoted as an entertainment/edutainment center expert in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times and Time magazine and received recognition for family-friendly designs by Pizza Today magazine. One of the company's projects was featured as an example of an edutainment project in the book The Experience Economy. Numerous national newspapers have interviewed him as an expert on shopping center and mall entertainment and retail-tainment.
Randy is a graduate of New York University. Prior to repositioning the company in 1989 to work exclusively in the leisure and learning industry, White Hutchinson was active in the retail/commercial real estate industry as a real estate consultancy specializing in workouts/turnarounds of commercial projects. In the late 1960s to early 1980s, Randy managed a diversified real estate development company that developed, owned and managed over 2.0 million square feet of shopping centers and mixed-use projects and 2,000 acres of residential subdivisions. Randy has held the designations of CSM (Certified Shopping Center Manager) and Certified Retail Property Executive (CRX) from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).
He has authored over 150 articles that have been published in over 40 leading entertainment/leisure and early childhood education industry magazines and journals and has been a featured speaker and keynoter at over 40 different conventions and trade groups.
Randy is the editor of his company's Leisure eNewsletter, has a blog and posts on Twitter and Linkedin.
