Recession Means More People Travel Locally, Take Shorter Trips

(MoneyWatch)  I suppose it's not a surprise that during a recession, people tend to stay closer to home and they take shorter trips, but it's quite staggering to see some actual numbers here. NileGuide's CEO Josh Steinitz sent me over some search data from their site showing just what a change they've seen. Since NileGuide is a trip planning site, they should know this stuff.

First up, let's look at the number of people staying close to home. The following chart is based on 4,000 searches around Southern California. The percentage of people searching for trips within the state of California increased from low single digits to nearly a third of the total searches.

Next, let's look at the duration of trips that people are researching. Last fall, the average was just over 8 days in length, but that has now plunged more than a third to just over 5 days. This data is from tens of thousands of users sitewide.

Like I said, it's not surprising to see these trends, but it's certainly sobering when you see the actual numbers. It would seem that tourism businesses would do well to focus their marketing spend on markets closer to home these days since that's where the demand is growing.