State Department Alert Doesn't Dampen Vacation Plans

Two days after Sept. 11, 2001, most Americans were still huddled in front of their television sets watching wall-to-wall coverage of the horrific attacks on the United States.

But as soon as the government lifted the air travel ban, Wayne Tofel, owner of in Downers Grove, got on a plane for a planned vacation to Germany.

Although Tofel said he had no hesitations about flying so soon after the tragedy, it took a while for other local travelers to feel comfortable taking to the skies again.

The State Department issued  just more than a week ago—this time for a very different reason.

President Obama announced May 1 that Navy SEALS had killed 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. In the announcement’s wake, the State Department issued a generalized warning for U.S. citizens traveling abroad.

Local travel agencies report, however, that the aftermath of bin Laden’s demise hasn’t made a ripple in upcoming vacation plans.

No one called  in Woodridge to change or cancel plans last week because of the recent alert, said owner Shirley Qualtier.

“Pretty much once people book their trips, they’re not going to change plans unless they hear something really bad,” she said.

She added that the agency is booking new trips at a normal rate.

Broad alerts, such as the one the State Department issued last week, don’t have too much of an impact, Qualtier said.

When people do change plans because of a travel warning, said  manager Lin Kopacz, it’s more likely based on a very specific situation, such as the travel warning issued for Mexico at the onset of the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009.

Sometimes, however, travelers will take the warning a little too far by avoiding an entire country when it’s really only one part that may have an issue.

“People panic but they don’t realize the whole story,” said Kopacz, noting what a large country Mexico is.

Although some Americans chose to avoid Mexico altogether, she said they could have still vacationed at resorts more than 700 miles from the epicenter of the outbreak—much farther than Darien residents were from H1N1 cases diagnosed in Chicago.

Across the board, travel agencies said it took at least a year for travel to return to normal after the 9/11 attacks.

However, it’s continued to be a rocky decade for the industry. The down economy has dealt a longer-term blow to travel plans.

“That really knocked the wind out of our sails,” Tofel said. “Travel is your extra, and if you don’t have to, you don’t.”

Still, local agencies are seeing signs of optimism again—and they don’t expect general alerts such as the one issued last week to change things.

“People get married, they still want to go on a honeymoon,” Qualtier said. “People still want to go on vacation with their families.”