In my June 2015 blog I reported on Americans’ plans for taking a vacation in the coming summer months. Skift, a travel intelligence and marketing company, periodically surveys Americans about their vacations and just released the results from their January 2016 survey on the actual vacations that Americans took in 2015. The results are not encouraging for any location-based leisure venues that cater to vacationers, whether they are out-of-town on a trip or on a staycation at home. 41% of Americans didn’t a single day off in 2015 and another one-sixth took less than five days of vacation. Those are the same percentages as the results for 2014 (within the range of statistical significance).
Some other highlights from analysis of the data include:
- U.S. Midwesterner are the least likely to take vacations, while residents of the North, East and West the most likely to.
- Americans living in rural areas are the biggest group taking no vacations, compared to those living in urban and suburban areas.
- Wealthy Americans took the most number of days off in 2015, while the opposite happened at the poorer ended of the income spectrum.
- Parents and their families have more trouble taking vacations than the non-parents.
About Randy White
Randy White is CEO and co-founder of the White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group. The 31-year-old company, with offices in Kansas City, Missouri, has worked for over 600 clients in 37 countries throughout the world. Projects the company has designed and produced have won seventeen 1st place awards. Randy is considered to be one of the world's foremost authorities on feasibility, brand development, design and production of leisure experience destinations including entertainment, eatertainment, edutainment, agritainment/agritourism, play and leisure facilities.
Randy was featured on the Food Network's Unwrapped television show as an eatertainment expert, quoted as an entertainment/edutainment center expert in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times and Time magazine and received recognition for family-friendly designs by Pizza Today magazine. One of the company's projects was featured as an example of an edutainment project in the book The Experience Economy. Numerous national newspapers have interviewed him as an expert on shopping center and mall entertainment and retail-tainment.
Randy is a graduate of New York University. Prior to repositioning the company in 1989 to work exclusively in the leisure and learning industry, White Hutchinson was active in the retail/commercial real estate industry as a real estate consultancy specializing in workouts/turnarounds of commercial projects. In the late 1960s to early 1980s, Randy managed a diversified real estate development company that developed, owned and managed over 2.0 million square feet of shopping centers and mixed-use projects and 2,000 acres of residential subdivisions. Randy has held the designations of CSM (Certified Shopping Center Manager) and Certified Retail Property Executive (CRX) from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).
He has authored over 150 articles that have been published in over 40 leading entertainment/leisure and early childhood education industry magazines and journals and has been a featured speaker and keynoter at over 40 different conventions and trade groups.
Randy is the editor of his company's Leisure eNewsletter, has a blog and posts on Twitter and Linkedin.
