It’s a Friday in June, and that means that many people are getting set to hit the road for the weekend. As indicated by writer Clifford Krauss, the great American road trip is back, in part because of cheaper gasoline prices. Gasoline this driving season is cheaper than it has been for eleven years according to AAA.
While the recovery has become shaky, it recently celebrated its seventh birthday, helping position more Americans to finance a road trip. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, Americans drove a record three point one five trillion miles last year, beating the previous mark established in two thousand and seven. So far this year, both travel and gasoline consumption are up again.
All of this is good news for hotels, restaurants, theme parks and other destinations. Attendance at national parks in twenty fifteen reached three hundred million for the first. There were five point five million visitors to the Grand Canyon last year, which represented a sixteen percent increase from the prior year.
Attendance at theme parks across the county is projected to rise nearly three percent this year. Sales of recreational vehicles are now at their highest level since two thousand and six.
