Sun editorial:

Summer at home?

Rising travel costs may halt vacation plans, keeping residents close to home

Saturday, May 31, 2008 | 2:05 a.m.

Airfares have gone up. Checking even one bag can include a fee, and now at least one airline is revoking the free pretzels.

Combine these air travel woes with $4-a-gallon gasoline, and the summer vacation of 2008 may be a trip to the back yard.

US Airways announced this week that it no longer will offer free snacks on domestic flights, capping a month in which American Airlines announced it will charge passengers $15 for any checked bag and other carriers announced they will charge as much as $25 for a second checked bag and are considering a fee like American’s. American, Delta and United airlines also have announced fare increases of as much as $60.

A recent Travel Industry Association survey says almost a third of air travelers avoided at least one trip over the past year because of such frustrations as travel delays, cancellations and inefficient security screening processes. Making travel more expensive isn’t going to help.

The 41 million trips that air travelers did not take represented a loss of $26.5 billion, which includes $5.6 billion in losses for hotels, $3.1 billion in losses for restaurants and $4.2 billion in losses of federal, state and local tax revenue. That could adversely affect Las Vegans who work in the tourism industry.

And traveling by auto isn’t much prettier when gasoline costs $4 or more a gallon. A May survey by Better Homes and Gardens magazine reports that 52 percent of its readers say they plan to stay home this summer.

While that doesn’t bode well for the Las Vegas Valley’s tourism industry, vacationing at home is not such a bad prospect for people who live here. After all, valley residents live in one of the world’s top tourist destinations.

There are far worse places to be stranded.

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