Cost-conscious Michigan families rethink their summer vacations

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a day ago

Michigan families are still getting out of town this summer but they're not traveling as far, or for as long.
Faced with rising prices on everything from rent to groceries, many Michiganders are scaling back on summer travel. Families are driving instead of flying, opting for shorter getaways and looking for more budget-friendly options like cruises or trips closer to home.
"The family customer is looking to cut costs whenever or wherever they can," Geoffrey Lenart, owner of the St. Clair Shores-based travel agency Seven Seas Travel, said in an email. He said his agency has seen a big drop in that business compared with 2022 and 2023.
"Our agency used to book a lot of family vacations for the summer and we are not seeing that this year," he said.
While travel remains a priority for most Michigan residents, the post-pandemic travel boom has cooled in certain ways.
More than 80% of Michiganders said they plan to take at least one vacation for three or more days this year, according to a January survey by the American Automobile Association. June and July are the most popular months for Michigan residents to travel, followed closely by August and September, the survey found.
This year, however, marks a shift. In the years following the pandemic, there was high travel demand, and prices rose as a result, peaking in 2023.
More on how costs have risen: Inflation is slowing. Wages are up. So why does life feel costly for many Michiganders?
It's becoming cheaper to travel
Prices are declining, although they still remain well above pre-pandemic levels.
The average cost of a flight from Detroit in the third quarter of last year (July, August and September) was $404, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The travel search engine Kayak found both domestic and international travel each saw a 9% decrease in airfare for Michiganders compared with last summer.
U.S. hotel rates, meanwhile, fell slightly by 2% to $174/night in 2024 compared with 2023, according to Hotels.com's 2025 Hotel Price Index.
Overall, the average cost of a trip (a round-trip flight and a typical hotel) for Americans is down 6% compared with last summer, Kayak found.
But consumer behavior has shifted ... to cruises
Lenart said while he's seeing prices start to drop significantly on certain trips, cruises have become a more popular option with some travelers. He said Seven Seas Travel's cruise business is up at least 200% this year compared with last year.
Brandon Javon Easley, 36, of Eastpointe, will leave in early August for a dream trip of his: a cruise around Greece for seven days, celebrating his and his wife's anniversary.
Easley is leaving his two kids at home but he'll be joined by about 60 family members on the cruise, which was planned by Seven Seas Travel.
He started using Seven Seas Travel to plan trips to Las Vegas but once he went on one cruise, "I've been hooked ever since."
What Easley likes about cruises is that he can see multiple cities in one trip and also pay for the cruise in monthly installments far ahead.
Traveling "becomes affordable because you're able to put down your deposit. They actually help you to set up a payment plan, and it's not so much that you take a large hit at one time. So being able to put down a minimum deposit and then turning around and being able to pay monthly or biweekly ... makes it very, very easy and affordable," he said.
Even though these cruises aren't cheap — his cruise to Greece will cost about $7,000 — Easley said he's noticed that prices for cruises have become more affordable in recent years.
Lenart said that with cruises, customers can pay up to 18 months ahead, which is common practice.
'Staycations' are growing in popularity
Even if families aren't turning as much to travel agencies to book their summer travel, they are still traveling.
While cruises are a relatively small but growing segment of Michigan travel, the most popular type of trip this year for Michiganders is a road trip, AAA found, with 45% of survey respondents saying they plan to take this type of trip in 2025.
The vacation rental website Airbnb, meanwhile, found U.S. travelers who are looking to book through Airbnb are interested more this year in trips within 300 miles of their homes. Groups and families account for more than 60% of searches for rentals within 300 miles of home, according to a recent summer trend report from Airbnb.
In fact, nearly 30% of Americans with children ages 18 or younger living at home said that they are choosing staycations over travel to other destinations, or are very likely to do so, according to an April online survey conducted by Panterra Research and Airbnb.
Early insights from northern Michigan hotels indicate that Michigan residents are traveling to northern Michigan in record numbers. Typically, about 70% of northern Michigan tourists live in the state, executives at northern Michigan organizations that promote tourism say.
Jim Powell, executive director of the Petoskey Area Visitors Bureau, said hotel occupancy in June was on track to match June's 2024 occupancy rate, which was a record June for the region. The week of the July 4 holiday weekend, he said some hotels did report having some vacancies on Monday and Tuesday but hotels were mostly full by the holiday weekend. Powell attributed that to people holding off to see what the weather would be and being unsure about taking a family vacation.
"Coming out of COVID, we've had these wonderful growth years and that growth has continued," he said. "We keep predicting that it's going to fall back, but it's not."
Powell said one reason why that growth has continued is because of the area's accessibility.
"It's a three- to four-hour drive, so it's a tank of gas," Powell said. "We have a variety of hotel products here, everything from some old school motels and hotels that are super affordable and priced right. Then we have the other end of the spectrum."
Trevor Tkach, president and CEO of Traverse City Tourism, said he knew based on surveys that consumers are thinking about their finances. They also said that their intent to travel never wavered.
Tkach said this year through June, the average length of stay at a hotel in Traverse City dropped slightly compared with last year. The percentage of visitors staying overnight is down from about 80% to 77%, suggesting to him that people are still visiting Traverse City, but they are staying for fewer nights than they otherwise might and could be driving in for the day instead of staying overnight.
He said the average hotel room cost has dropped compared with 2024, which he said could be partly due to the significant increase in hotel inventory in Traverse City this year.
The average hotel price in Traverse City based on data from 28 hotels is $219, with high season averages around $408, according to an analysis from BudgetYourTrip.com.
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Trips are last to be sacrificed
A Panterra poll confirmed that travel remains a priority for many people. It found that vacations are the last thing to be cut from people's budgets, with the majority of those surveyed saying they are more likely to (or will) spend less on dining out, entertainment or will change brands to stay in budget.
That's how Chris Sherrod, 35, of Westland, feels. Sherrod has five children but still makes it a priority to travel. Often, that travel is around his children's out-of-town sports tournaments, and he and his wife find free activities to do with their children to make a vacation out of it.
Most years at the beginning of summer, he and his family drive to Disney World in Florida for their annual summer vacation, but, this year, they couldn't get their schedules to line up.
So instead, Sherrod is taking an adults-only vacation with his wife and some friends and family to Puerto Vallarta, a resort town on Mexico's west coast. He used an AAA travel agent to help him identify the weeks with the cheapest flights and book flights within his budget, which was $800 per person for a round-trip flight. The travel agent helped him find flights for $600 per person. Leading up to the trip, Sherrod is making sure to keep expenses in check, such as spending no more than $125 on groceries per week.
Contact Adrienne Roberts: [e-mail]
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Cost-conscious Michigan families rethink their summer vacations