Americans think twice about hitting the road this weekend

Sept. 1, 2011— -- Americans are thinking twice about traveling this Labor Day weekend.

High unemployment, expensive gasoline, higher hotel room rates and the hassles of securing a seat on packed planes are giving travelers pause this year at a time families typically squeeze in one last getaway, experts say.

The number of Americans who will travel at least 50 miles from home this holiday weekend will fall 2.4% to about 31.5 million, the auto club AAA estimates.

Driving is how most Americans who are traveling will get away, AAA says. But gasoline averaged $3.62 a gallon nationally on Wednesday, about $1 more than last year.

Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service, says a $1-a-gallon increase year over year on Labor Day is something Americans haven't faced in the last five years and should dampen travel.

"There's a tendency to say people will grin and bear it," Kloza says of higher pump prices. "But quietly, people will drive a little less."

Cynthia Brough, a spokeswoman for AAA, says its survey of travelers found that about about 29% of them thought high gasoline prices would affect their travel plans.

Other costs of travel also are higher than last year at a time when Americans are uneasy about the economy.

Real disposable income is up 1.3% from a year ago, while AAA's travel price index is up 6.7%. Brough said families making $50,000 or less were more sensitive to the higher costs of travel.

Domestic airfares for the weekend are 9% higher, averaging $320 round-trip, than last year, according to data from Travelocity.

In the face of that, AAA estimates that the number of leisure travelers flying this weekend will fall 1.9% to about 2.5 million.

The deeply discounted hotel rooms vacationers saw in the last two years are gone. Travelers will pay about 7% more on average than last year for rooms in the top 25 travel markets, says the travel research firm Rubicon.

Genevieve Brown of Travelocity says that some airfares and hotel room rates had dropped as the weekend neared, indicating people were becoming increasingly reluctant to leave home.

Also adding to travelers' skittishness this year are images of Northeast airports jammed this week with passengers looking for flights in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene.

About 14,000 flights were canceled from Saturday through Monday, according to the flight-tracking service FlightAware. That left the airlines with a backlog of hundreds of thousands of passengers to rebook.

The airlines said they planned to have the backlog cleared by the weekend. American Airlines said Wednesday it already had rescheduled all its backlogged passengers.