The Rise Of Road Trips

Today’s travel includes a great amount of road trips, offering greater control and flexibility in tourism. Listen in as Rob Levine, President of Marriner, and Shannon Gray, CEO of Gray Research Solutions, discuss the rise of different road tripping styles, from the direct overnight drives to leisurely "slow mosey" journeys.

TRANSCRIPT:

ROB: So, you know, it's interesting for us as a family, one of the kind of dynamics that changed related to travel coming out of COVID was, you know, we had a Florida trip planned and we were going to go come hell or high water. And we ended up having to get in the car at, you know, eight o'clock one night, and we were on the beach in Fort Lauderdale by one o'clock the next day. We just drove and we banged it out. And what we realized was that kind of the calculus started changing for us at that point. We had never really been road trippers before. And one of the things that we really liked about that, aside from the overnight drive and pit stops at the Waffle House, was that we had like a lot of control over the trip.

We meandered, we stopped in Richmond on the way home. We could come and go whenever we wanted. We didn't have to deal with a rental car. And like, what are you seeing related to driveability? And how can destinations leverage it?

SHANNON: What's fascinating about this particular trend to me is that it continues to evolve. The further away we get from COVID, the further things change. But first of all, COVID changed a lot of things about the average traveler behavior.

You nailed it, it was mostly people staying more domestic than, of course, but nobody could fly, nobody could go internationally anymore. We kind of started to rediscover what domestic travel can do for you. So there's just as many awesome places to go that you could actually get to in your car not having to deal with a flight, worry about it's gonna be canceled, blah, blah, blah. So we saw road tripping really explode. And I do quotes because there's so many different types of road tripping. We have the get directly where you're going, which is what you guys did drive overnight, get from point A to point B. That's one type of kind of direct to destination.

We also see this really awesome trend. And I had an intercept interview with a visitor. We had somebody describe it as a slow mosey. So, this slow mosey travel, which now they were like, yeah, after COVID, we just started doing now we do slow mosey trips. And ever since he said that it's been repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and all kinds of interviews that we do. And the slow mosey trip is just what it sounds like. You're not in a rush to really get anywhere. You're kind of just, you're in a discovery mode, right? That's part of the excitement of it. You're driving, you have full control in your car. You have a general idea which direction you're headed and where you probably will end up. But you're not in a rush to really get there because you wanna kind of explore the back roads and see the scenic routes and oh, there's the, you know, nation's biggest ball of yarn over there. Let's go visit that. That'd be fun to see. And it's this really cool trend of exploration and discovery. And it brings a certain sense of delight. Surprise and delight that really makes an impact on people and makes them remember. There's also that has created a challenge and an opportunity in my opinion for DMOs in that if you want to slow mosey, and you want to get from point A to point B but you want to do it in the most scenic route with the most interesting things to see, there's no GPS button to hit to create that route for you. .

GPS is only good for here's a few different routes from point A to point B, but there's no scenic route button. Bring me on the most beautiful route from here to there. And so if people want to do a slow mosey trip, they really have to put that together themselves. So I've seen a lot of DMOs, a lot of them gave up on maps when GPS came out, nobody uses them anymore. Everybody just uses Waze, like we don't need maps anymore. And I've seen a lot of DMOs kind of go back to not necessarily the old school map where you pull it out and it's a big one, but creating suggestions for pretty routes and slow mosey routes and exciting things to see over here. And this is a really scenic one. And with this one, you'll go through farmland and small towns and you can stop at the local pottery place and go boutique shopping. And on this one, there's lots of overlooks and cliffs that are gorgeous and you see a lot. And the DMO has kind of filled in that space. If they're doing it right, I think there's a lot of opportunity for a DMO to easily put those routes together and those itineraries together to help people along. And the other thing that that really benefits is that we've got we're sending more tourists and visitors to the small towns to the little shops to the rural areas which sometimes suffer. From lack of tourism, because people are just staying on the interstate going from point A to point B. Yeah.

So yeah road trip travel has definitely increased. And just the kinds of road trips are fascinating. We have a lot more people traveling to ultimately visit a family member. Like you're driving to see your sister or your brother or your family. But again, a slow mosey on the way there, where you're seeing what there is to see. So yeah, road tripping is huge.