COLUMBUS – With health and government officials stressing that staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others from contracting and spreading COVID-19, travel experts are predicting Thanksgiving holiday travel in Ohio will fall to recession-era levels.
At the same time, a survey from Ohio State suggests a large number of Americans don’t plan to follow the most widely recommended steps to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
The auto club AAA anticipates at least a 10% drop in travel nationally and at least a 9% drop in Ohio travel this Thanksgiving, the largest one-year decrease since the Great Recession in 2008, AAA Ohio senior public affairs manager Kimberly Schwind said.
Based on data from mid-October, Schwind says AAA would have expected up to 50 million Americans, including up to 2.1 million Ohioans, to travel for the holiday. That’s down from 55 million Americans, and 2.3 million Ohioans, that traveled in 2019.
However, rising COVID-19 case numbers have prompted the auto club to predict that the actual number of holiday travelers will be even lower.
The number of people driving for the holiday Nov. 25-29 is expected to drop by at least 4.3% nationally and 3.1% in Ohio, though travelers will find gas prices on average nationally are nearly 50 cents cheaper than this time last year. The average price of regular gas in Ohio Thursday was $2.01 a gallon, 48 cents lower than on the same date in 2019.
Air travel volume will be down by nearly half, the largest one-year decrease on record, despite the lowest fares in three years.
See the CDC’s holiday celebration guidelines here
A new national survey by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center finds that, although a majority of Americans plan to take precautions at holiday gatherings, nearly two in five report they will likely defy guidelines and attend a gathering with more than 10 people and a third will not ask guests to wear masks,” said Dr. Iahn Gonsenhauser, the hospital’s chief quality and patient safety officer.
Gonsenhauser says the safest ways to celebrate is to communicate virtually and cancel in-person plans, but those who decide to have guests should require masks at all times, separate seating arrangements by household and assign only one or two people to serve the food.
Anyone planning to travel or welcome out-of-town guests should stay informed about the COVID-19 rates and restrictions in both locations.