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Vacationers Committed, So Family Travel Planning Tools Increase

According to a recent survey from Disney's Family.com, while 82% of families plan to take summer 2009 vacations, 33% have scaled back and are getting more creative on where and how to spend their time and money. Disney's research indicates that 56% are taking shorter trips, 41% are driving versus flying, and 40% are figuring out ways to eat out less often while on vacation.

Those add up to good reasons why Disney's family planner community has published tips for a number of local, made-in-the-USA vacations. At their site, Family.go.com, resident travel expert Claire Newell has suggestions for vacations in all price ranges. The site’s travel resource provides a combination of expert reviews, parent recommendations, and age-appropriate points of interest for family-friendly destinations on any budget, with search tools to make trips easy to plan.

“Our goal is to help parents plan a great family vacation whether they are going to travel across the world, across the country or across town – even on a budget families can plan fun summer vacations,” said Emily Smith, Vice-President of the Disney Family Group.

Another group going after the USA travel market is the U.S. Travel Association, which has a a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce to build and market official travel planning websites targeting the five leading inbound markets to the United States (Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany).

Their online resources include information garnered in partnership with all 50 state tourism offices and more than 100 convention and visitors bureaus, all presented in a new site, DiscoverAmerica.com. This one-stop travel planning source features special deals and offers to help foreigners (and of course, US residents) save time and money and get on the road this summer.

"We've brought together a wealth of information and made it easy for travelers to find great destinations, activities and deals," said Roger Dow, President and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, at its launch. According to their spokesperson, the site's 7,000 pages feature official content on all 50 states, the five U.S. territories, more than 100 cities and regional destinations, and more than 3,000 popular trip activities in 24 categories that can be sorted by user interest, time of year, or by geographic region.