Airline Tourism

October 22, 2008

It turns out that concerns about hurricanes don’t keep people from flying to Florida, but lack of money might. University of Florida researchers studied the factors affecting air travel to the sunshine state. Researcher Jose Cazanova says consumers will brave the heat and the storms if they can afford it.

Cazanova: “Consumers do not listen to the hurricanes. They already have their plans and basically, income is the basic demand driver and then when you include the hurricane variable, which was hurricane impacts in Florida, consumers still were coming to Florida.”

Airlines account for at least half of the tourists to Florida each year.

Cazanova: “Florida has the largest accessibility as far as airports. It has more commercial airports than any other state in the country. So policy makers have already seen that; how important air travel is to Florida.”

And with hotels and airlines tacking on penalties, researchers say many tourists simply don’t want to deal with the hassle of having to change their travel plans.

(See related post: )