Seven weeks after the U.S. government allowed across-the-board spending cuts to take effect in an effort to address budget deficits, federal transportation and security departments and the travel industry itself are getting a clearer picture of what impact the 5% cuts will have on domestic travel as the summer peak season approaches.
The budget reductions known as sequestration went into effect March 1. They are expected to result in an estimated $85 billion a year in savings.
In the travel and tourism sector, the cuts will have a negative impact on everything from flight delays to longer airport security lines, museum exhibit openings and national parks programs.
“Sequestration is coming at a time when we actually need additional help,” said Erik Hansen, director of domestic policy for the U.S. Travel Association. “There’s a lot of debate and concern in Washington on when and how the cuts will have their impact.”
Some of the more visible effects this summer will be found within the National Parks Service, which oversees the country’s more than 400 national parks. Last year, those parks saw their combined visitor count rise by 1.3%, to almost 283 million.
Given the sequester’s mandatory $153.4 million cut from the National Parks Service’s annual budget, the agency will have to close a still-to-be determined number of campgrounds, according to Parks Service spokesman Jeffrey Olson. He added that within the portions of the parks that remain open, managers will have to cut so much staff that many parks will be forced to keep their shorter winter hours through summer.
In addition, half of the 16 visitor centers along the Blue Ridge Parkway will be closed this year, Olson said.
Some cultural attractions and government-sponsored celebrations will also feel the impact of the spending reductions. For example, the Smithsonian Institution will take a $41 million hit to its annual budget, forcing the nation’s curator to deploy rolling closures of exhibits. However, no museums will have to be closed as a result of the cuts, according to Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas.
Events, too, will be feeling the pinch. For example, next month’s Fleet Week New York has been held since 1984. The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships, plus a gathering of tall ships in New York Harbor, attracted more than 100,000 visitors last year. This year’s event is expected to be scaled back, perhaps substantially.
With the sequester still less than two months old, many agencies still aren’t ready to offer specifics on how the cuts will affect operations. For instance, Airports Council International — North America, which represents the governing bodies that oversee U.S. airports, would only say that it is “bracing for millions of dollars in adverse economic impacts due to reductions in airport capacity, passenger delays and tower closures.”
Other agencies have recently spelled out the effects of the spending reductions in more detail.
Most importantly, more than $600 million of the almost $1 billion in annual Transportation Department (DOT) spending cuts will come from the FAA. More specifically, most of the FAA’s 47,000 workers will be furloughed for 10% of their workdays, with some workers being furloughed for as much as 20% of their work time.
As a result, secondary airports in Boca Raton, Fla., and San Marcos, Texas, might have to shutter their air traffic control towers, while peak flight-time delays to major airports such as New York Kennedy and San Francisco could lengthen by an additional 90 minutes. And with furloughs slated to start April 21, those flight delays may start taking effect as early as this week.
Meanwhile, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been forced to cut spending for the year ending Sept. 30 by $670 million. That figure amounts to about 8.8% of the TSA’s year-earlier budget and is more than triple the spending cuts the agency had expected prior to sequestration, TSA Deputy Administrator John W. Halinski told the House Committee on Homeland Security on April 12.
Among other things, the TSA budget cuts will prolong a hiring freeze on federal air marshals, a security force introduced after the 9/11 attacks, and will require spending cuts to the department’s IT division.
Such cutbacks come at an inopportune time for a U.S. travel industry that appears to be gaining momentum after what some analysts have termed “the lost decade.”
The U.S. lost international travel market share largely because of increased inbound travel restrictions caused by beefed-up homeland security policies in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Travel numbers were further hampered by the recession and the resulting decline in the discretionary-spending levels needed to fuel tourism.
Travel numbers are on the rebound, however, making the most recent budget cuts especially problematic for public entities looking to service increased demand. U.S. leisure-travel spending, which increased 7.2%, to $564 billion, in 2011, likely increased again last year. At the same time, the number of domestic leisure trips, which exceeded record 2007 numbers last year, are expected to rise about 1% in 2013, according to U.S. Travel.
Meanwhile, international air travel is approaching pre-recession levels. Last year, the number of passengers on flights going to and from the U.S. rose 1.3%, to 815.3 million, with the country’s two busiest airports — New York Kennedy and Miami — each seeing increases of more than 5% in airline passengers in 2012, the DOT reported earlier this month.
Government agencies say they’re doing their best to keep changes brought on by the spending cuts as unobtrusive to the traveler as possible. Typically, they favor measures such as gradual reductions in visitor center hours instead of outright closures, or staving off physical improvements as long as possible.
In addition, some communities and other nongovernment entities are stepping up an effort to fill at least a fraction of the spending gap. For example, the Wyoming cities of Jackson and Cody, whose businesses are largely dependent on spending by visitors to nearby Yellowstone National Park, raised $170,000 for the Wyoming Department of Transportation to help pay for this spring’s snow-plowing of service roads linking the park to the towns.
Olson said nonprofit park-support organizations popularly known as friends groups, which regularly help pay for non-recurring national parks expenses, have raised extra funds this year to help pay for regular operations at places such as Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park and Massachusetts’ Cape Cod National Seashore.
“It was welcome assistance,” Olson said. “These are not the normal things that friends groups do for parks.”
Still, both Olson and Hansen said that such charity can’t be seen as a permanent solution, and both are lobbying for the sequestration cuts to be as temporary as possible.
“The industry has always strived to make the travel process welcoming and friendly, whether it be at airports or national parks,” Hansen said. “The industry has always pitched in. But there are certain federal roles that can’t be supplemented by the private sector.”
Follow Danny King on Twitter @dktravelweekly.
Correction: The Wyoming cities of Jackson and Cody raised $170,000 for the Wyoming Department of Transportation to help pay for this spring’s snow-plowing of service roads linking Yellowstone to the towns. A previous version of the report wrongly said the cities were Casper and Cody.