Gashostage.com

Memorial Day holiday weekend is upon us and upwards of 37 million people are expected to be traveling the roads and flying the skies.  With the increase in fuel costs this year, motorists are expected to stay closer to home then normal.  It is unfortunate, but families now have to budget extra money for fuel costs when traveling the country and it may mean less tourist dollars for some communities.  It is a shame as part of the great appeal of the US, is the wide open and ever changing scenery the country has to offer not only to foreign tourists but local ones as well. 

AAA said 37.6 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more, or about 1 percent more than last year - an estimate derived from a national phone survey of 1,500 adults. More than 80 percent of those travelers will take road trips, while another 10 percent will fly. The remainder will be packed into trains and buses.

The number of Memorial Day travelers had risen by more than 2 percent in each of the past two years, after remaining flat in 2003 and declining marginally in 2002.
The average retail price of gasoline is $2.93 a gallon, or 36 percent higher than a year ago, and that appears to be having some impact on fuel consumption, according to Energy Department statistics.
AAA forecast that flights over the holiday weekend would be about 10 percent more expensive than a year ago and that hotel rates would be roughly 5 percent higher. More than 40 percent of those surveyed said they would be staying with friends or relatives, with another 35 percent sleeping at hotels and motels.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 26th, 2006 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Articles, Gas Prices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.