Rockin’ a Hard Place: Travel boom brings lots of tourists everywhere, including our Rock

I am just back from a wonderful three-week cruise that took us from New York City to Quebec City, Canada. What struck me the most, in addition to the beautiful scenery and fall colors, was the sheer volume of people sightseeing, photographing, dining and spending wads of cash.

It’s never been unusual to stand in a crowd in Manhattan; but as I was doing just that earlier this month, I couldn’t help flashing back to the huge crowds I had seen jamming Langley, Coupeville and Oak Harbor from May through September. In fact, they still seem to be crowding the Rock’s main tourist streets on weekends now, when it’s not raining.

Getting specific information about how much bigger tourism has been this year, especially on the Rock, takes time. We have to wait for the state to report sales tax and lodging tax revenue, which won’t be for a few more months. So we just have to go by what we see and hear.

I chatted with two store owners on Front Street in Coupeville recently and both said this has been their best year ever. And the other simple evidence was simply watching so many tourists go from one restaurant to the next, only to be told it would be an hour or more before they could have a table. And need I mention the eternal lack of parking everywhere?

On our cruise, most of the travelers were what we call “of a certain age.” In other words, we had enough gray hair to have both the time and money to afford a three-week trip with all the excursions, meals, cocktails, etc. Among more than 300 passengers, there was only one young couple with a child.

<!–

–>

When I spoke with our cruise director, she said our trip had been sold out for almost a year and the return trip from Quebec to New York, which left the day the we disembarked, had been sold out even longer.

Then I thought about how long ago we had booked our flights going and coming — about two weeks after we booked the cruise. And how, of course, all the flights we were on had every seat occupied with no overhead space left for small suitcases. I checked the data base and it shows that air traffic in the United States is up 11% so far this year, but international flights to and from the United States are up 17%.

Unlike the cruise passenger demographics, however, there were countless young families with kids on airplanes flying hither and yon. And on our shore excursions while on the cruise, there were many young families and baby strollers galore visiting the same sites we were, but having arrived by planes, trains or automobiles.

At one site, I talked with an owner of a tourist attraction we visited, and I asked her why she thought so many couples with young children were traveling. She had an explanation I never thought of. The cost of buying a first home has become so expensive that young people can’t afford them even though their income has risen. So, it appears that they are saying, “What the heck, let’s take an expensive trip instead.”

Of course, there was one key tourist demographic that was missing on the cruise, on our shore excursions and right here on the Rock. Those are folks in the 35 to 60 age bracket. It’s not too hard to figure out why. They are in their mid-career years and often can’t get a lot of time off work. They have big mortgages on the homes they bought. They also often have older children either in college or about to be — and that means savings must go for college, not travel. We’ll likely see them on cruises when they become “of a certain age.”

<!–

–>

So that’s what came to mind as I thought about our recent travels. Now it’s time to book our next adventure before it’s sold out.

Harry Anderson is a retired journalist who worked at the Los Angeles Times. He now lives on Central Whidbey.

This post was originally published on here