In Ipsos Travel Barometer polling released this month, the number of respondents saying they’ll do more leisure travel in the next 12 months slightly topped the number saying they’ll do less, 19 percent to 15 percent.

In many cases, this isn’t just wishful thinking by consumers who are sick of being stuck at home. “What we learned from this particular survey is that personal finances do not appear to be a strong deterrent to traveling,” says Mary Kaye O’Brien, vice president of travel for Ipsos Marketing. “Obviously, perceptions of affordability are impacted by personal disposable income. But the reality is that some travel, particularly hotel rates, has objectively become more affordable.” Nor has it been strictly a matter of cutting rates and hoping customers will show up. “Travel marketers have been communicating affordability and bargains,” says O’Brien, “impacting subjective perceptions of affordability as well.”

From his perspective as chief executive officer of TripAdvisor, Steve Kaufer has seen consumers’ determination to travel holding up well even amid a lousy economy. While air travel certainly took a hit, it’s not as though people stopped traveling altogether. “It’s more that people traveled more economically,” says Kaufer. It’s not so much a decline in travel as “a change in style,” he remarks, as when a person might say to himself, “Maybe I’ll drive down to D.C. instead of flying to Paris.”

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