Making Travel Plans? A lot of Americans are!

NBC's Rory O'Neill reports that more Americans are traveling than ever before. Gas prices at their lowest in 4 years helps!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Gasoline prices at this point are the lowest they've been
in several years. That feels good. Airline prices are at
least stable. Man, if we could get the potholes fixed
in this town, I might do some traveling myself. But Americans,
I guess, are actually looking at doing a little travel.
And again, Roy O'Neil from NBC on the standby right
now on the Legacy Retirement Group dot com phone lines, Roy,

(00:20):
good morning, how.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Are you hey there, Chuck? Happy Friday?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Thank you same to you. Are we actually getting the
audacity to be ambitious and do a little traveling, a
little vacationing, a little enjoying of life lately?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well, look we have America, I say we Americans have
caught the travel bug. Ever since the end of the pandemic, right,
we've been traveling overseas in particular more than ever, at
least when it comes to percentages. And the folks over
at the Points Guy putting out their predictions for the
year ahead, saying that you know, look, a lot of
Americans have already ticked Paris and Roam off the list.
So they're looking for other big destinations to go to.

(00:54):
But they want to find something that doesn't have all
those crowds of Americans filled in the streets, so they're
looking for more off the beaten path destinations. Also looking
to save a bucker too, because a couple of things. One,
we're all looking to save a bucker too these days.
But to the dollars value has been slipping a little bit,
so those European vacations are about ten percent more expensive

(01:16):
because the dollar doesn't have the buying power at once did.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
The warmth of the southern part of the globe has
always been something that attracts me. And as far as
I know, a lot of those areas. Dollars still pretty
strong down there, but the safety conciders come in. Are
we seeing much in the way of travel to like Mexico, Panama,
Costa Rica, things like that. Are people still avoiding that?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, Costa Rica still has strong numbers. Panama is a
bit dodgy, and say with Mexico as well. You know,
we are still seeing a lot of popularity in the
Eastern Caribbean and a lot of vacationers are choosing to
hop on cruise ships instead. You know, the cruise industry
we thought was going to be going out of business
after COVID like hope they're done. Yeah, and instead it

(01:59):
is bigger and better than ever before. More multi billion
dollar ships coming online it seems every month, whether it's
a family cruise ship like Disney, a more adult oriented
one like Virgin Cruise Line. But it also has that
appeal of multi generational travel. You saw that a lot
over Thanksgiving because the grandparents can be in the cabin

(02:19):
two doors down, the parents in one cabin, the kids
and another cabin. So it's easy for a whole generations
of a family to travel together. And they like it
on cruise.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Ships, and as far as conveyances go, the cruise industry
is probably the most apt Spinova backwards to bring you
things that kind of sweeten the deal. I mean, they
had they had the COVID, then they had all the
virus issues, then they had some ships, they had some violence,
so they really really want your business at this.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Point, well, right, and there are more ships coming to
a port near you. Okay, maybe not near you. You
you're a bit of a challenge, but look a lot
of there are a lot of river cruises that are
a lot closer by, and some of them are pretty
luxurious and pretty, and they can be family friendly as well,
but for a lot of Americans, they just hop on
that flight to port's like Miami, Fort Lauderdale Port Canaveral,

(03:06):
which is near Orlando, and hop on the ship from there,