AAA Reveals Americans Will Take Shorter Trips Closer To Home This Summer

Retired Wall Street analyst Ron Glantz is an inveterate traveler, and this year’s agenda was to have included trips to Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan in May; as well as an excursion to Rwanda and Tanzania at the end of the summer. Now, it turns out, those trips have all been canceled or postponed and the only time Glantz plans to leave Manhattan is for a family reunion in Rhode Island — which, he points out, “is an easy drive (and) on 43 acres for easy social distancing.”

Glantz is by no means alone. The months long lockdown covering most of the U.S. translated into empty roads, barren airports and anchored cruise ships. As the country slowly opens back up, traffic is on the rise, but experts don’t see a return to normal travel and vacation plans anytime soon.

That’s underscored by a new AAA report forecasting Americans will take just over 707 million trips this summer. That’s down about 15 percent from a year ago, a number that might seem relatively modest considering the broader impact of the pandemic. But a closer look reveals much more significant changes in how we travel and where we may go.

Almost 97 percent of those trips are expected to be made by car, with travel by automobile forecast to decline by a modest 3.3 percent year-over-year, said the AAA. By comparison, road trips accounted for 85.3 percent of summer travel last year.

Check out the full article from NBC here.