traveldreams11

i heard as a CA resident that it’s because of it being a more common travel destination but how come traveling within the IS almost as expensive as traveling to other countries? Eg teaveling to Atlanta is almost as expensive as traveling to certain European countries. I’m grateful it’s economical to travel to other countries and I’d rather have the prices be what they are than to have US travel go down vs foreign go up. But I am unsure why that is considering I heard in Europe it costs $20 to travel from country to country.


Bear with me.

I kinda laugh but I fear there’s a slight chance this may happen. I fear that because of MY post that foreign travel will increase all of a sudden. Which I don’t want. What do you think chances are MY post I made inquiring about travel comparison had an effect on the travel? If it did how much do you think it was.

callum9999

Competition. There must be more than 30 airlines flying between California and Europe and only half a dozen flying to Atlanta.

I don't know if that's a joke or not, but no, your post won't have any affect on the price of travel at all!

84fiero

TATL fares have been pretty good - some TPAC as well - lately. The LCC/ULCC carriers have helped, among other things. Yet there are so many varied destinations in the US and in Europe...not to mention the rest of the world...I wouldn't make such a broad statement across the board. Some international destinations are cheaper than some US destinations - and some aren't. You have to try and compare apples-to-apples as best you can, e.g., high vs. low season in the respective destinations...cost of traveling to the destination compared to food, lodging, attraction, and other costs while at the destination (e.g., lots of cheap airline tickets to Orlando but if you're taking the kids to Disney World, the park tickets will cost a fortune!). Also where you're starting from - some of us in rural areas in the middle of the US have much slimmer pickings when it comes to good airfares (to anywhere desirable) compared to living in, say, LAX or NYC.

Sure you can go from one country to the next relatively inexpensively in many instances in Europe. But "$20 to travel from one country to another" is an exaggeration as a blanket statement across Europe - pricing all depends the origin and destination, services available (bus, train, ferry, car, airplane), demand, seasonal fluctuations, etc.

Bottom line, it's always going to be a function of various economic forces, as with most any other supply or service.

RustyC

I've been noticing a lot of what the OP has been noticing, but would add that you've got not only a worsening competitive landscape in the U.S., but also a lot of UNFAIR TAXES, especially on rental cars but also increasingly hotels. The taxes can DOUBLE the rental car cost in some places (Texas is really bad about that), and the uses are for things like building a basketball or hockey arena. Some states use it as a go-to revenue source for things they know their voters don't want to pay for. The theory is taxing someone who can't vote against you. (And with car rents the neighborhood places here tend to have much lighter tax burdens than the airport places).

You've also got more U.S. cities that are not car-optional in any sense of the word, and car+gas can cost more than airfare on some trips. For that you get to observe and battle traffic in a new city, perhaps.

Lately the hotel rates have been caught up in the real-estate appreciation in the U.S. as well. It's probably a bubble, but supply/demand has never been good for AFFORDABLE housing and it's getting bad even in the sprawl cities. If the low end of rents go up quite a bit (as has happened) then the Extended Stay America won't stay the same. I've always approached Florida with a "take the money off the table" strategy and it's ridiculous how expensive it's gotten vs. 20 years or so ago.

With the international travel you also get taxes and some countries are notorious (especially with reciprocity fees or departure taxes), so you can get a high upfront amount there as well. But lower everyday land costs over a long enough period can more than cancel that out.

I've always found Thailand interesting because their planning is a mess or non-existent, but they always overbuild. If Pattaya grows 2x they build 3x. Also to a good extent in other places, and Chiang Mai and Udon Thani have always been cheap.

EmailKid

You mean more taxes at the airport, no?

That's how it is in Texas, low tax low service state, so in order to pay for stuff, make the visitors pay for it since they can't vote you out

bigbuy

You can thank Cabotage laws for the lack of a massive amount of discounting in the USA. There are exceptions such as Frontier and Spirit.
If Cabotage was eliminated in the USA, it would allow international carriers the right to transport passengers "within" the USA instead of just allowing them to take passengers out of the USA.

exploreaswego

When travelling, many don't usually factoring in daily expenses such as local transportation, dining and activities cost. For a country with comparative higher standard of living as to poorer nations in the world, all these small expenses add up. $1,000 can probably last you a week or 2 if you live frugally, but a $1,000 USD in Thailand can probably last you a month living comfortably, due to currency exchange, purchasing power and lower standard of living,

On the other hand, airfare and hotels are another beast altogether that operates at ridiculous rates within the country here. They are multi corporate companies that run on a industry that ultimately drive major profits.

RustyC

Let's also not forget practices like "resort fees" that have encountered lots of buyer resentment but that hotels do anyway. It was a battle to get them un-hidden at even the most basic level, and they still (deliberately) distort search results so that a $70 hotel with a $30/day resort fee will show up ahead of a $90 a day hotel without one.

Which, in a nutshell, explains why, in places like Las Vegas, nearly every hotel has followed suit with the bad practice. When you reward the bad actors it puts pressure on everyone to adopt the bad actors' practices. That's the dark side of competition. Remember when your parents told you "Everyone's doing it" is not an excuse? Hotels don't follow as high a standard.

Las Vegas used to be one of the cheapest places in the country to stay or eat at the lowest end, but it's lost a lot of that advantage. Maybe at around $100-150 you still get a lot more vs. the comparable amount elsewhere (certainly NYC, DC, SF, etc.) but I don't really consider that "budget."

Around this time of year I'm also noticing unacceptably pricey CAR RENTAL situations that look a lot like collusion. Even cities with a lot of supply and some of the lower-cost operators like Denver still really spike around now. Some places in the Northwest also double or triple vs. off-season, and that's before 5 or 6 taxes or other charges (some of them unfair like the sports-arena ones) get added on.

OTOH, because of LCCs and ULCCs you have airports like ATL that draw from ever-wider areas, which isn't ideal. Places like MEM and CVG were losers in the airline consolidations and are trying to get back on their feet. OTOH, if an airline like Frontier flies into a secondary market you might be up against an Avis-Hertz-National-Alamo-Dollar-Thrifty "cartel" situation on the car costs, sometimes enough to ruin the deal. The smaller airports are generally much more pleasant to fly into or out of, but they get into a downward spiral where the airlines don't go there (or not affordably) and that limits the crowds and there's limited competition on cars and hotels. RNO used to be a good destination and the Tahoe places would often get top acts at the showroom, but today the chains have largely sold off their hotels and it's hard to get a cheap flight there from out of the short-haul region. It's devolved into mainly a drive-to destination for people who live within a certain radius.

KimchiExpress

USA is all about business. And that often involves scamming anyway legally possible.

Just look at the worst services in the USA - utilities, cell carriers, ISPs and cable TV providers. All are oligopolies or monopolies that exist because of government regulations. Airlines are a bit more free market but start up costs are huge and in many cases landing rights are controlled by individual states (another monopoly). Why are big carrier hubs so expensive to fly into? Because the carrier has all of the gates locked up.

And what do all of these companies have in common? They all want to merge and reduce the number of competitors. Hmmm.. Sprint and T-Mobile. AT&T and blah, blah. Every week it is another one wanting to merge.

Here in Asia flying is super dooper cheap in most countries. The ones that haven't deregulated have fewer tourists. Thailand is a prime example. Very easy for any carrier to fly into Bangkok. Thai government learned long ago that there is much more money to be earned after the tourist lands than trying to charge more for national carrier flights. Malaysia tourism has boomed since Air Asia took off.

Canada was MUCH worse than the USA. With little competition prices are stupid. Oh, cell and Internet service in Canada sucks, too.

sant1306

When I was in US I had an option to explore other cities in US but instead I flew to Mexico...because it was cheaper. I had wondered the same.
You are certainly right in Europe country to country you can travel at just 15$!. However, size matters. Flight Amsterdam to Budapest (crossing 4 countries) indeed 20$ equals to distance between LAX and LAS, I guess they are in same state .
Best deal I had received was Belfast-Malta (4hrs each way), return ticket 32pounds.

JamesLoughney

Europe consists of many countries, many much smaller than one US state. So travel between any one could cost just a dollar or two bus or train fare. A flight may cost just 20 as a rare airline loss leader, but with taxes additional to that as well as punitive airline imposed fees for eg modest luggage weights. As a frequent flyer to the States from the UK over the last 35 years I have an impression - subjective and unscientific - that US domestic flights per mile are far more expensive than transatlantic flights. Partly of course due to the relative lack of eg any meaningful passenger train services in the States. I have two adult daughters in the States approaching college completion. My impression based on research and experience is that it will be easier and cheaper to visit them in locations where they end up living - possibly thousands of miles apart, by flying from LHR to their home cities, rather than relocating myself to a "mid-point" in the States and flying from there, to their respective locations.

ChinaShrek

One other thing to consider is that in the United States people are much more willing to drive to their destination than fly. I live in Maine and we just started summer vacation. There are many people I know who will drive from Maine to Florida this summer instead of flying and this is for a one or two week trip! A principal I know is driving to Kansas just to go to the Eisenhower Museum (and will stop at some sights on the way). I would never drive from London to Budapest or from Madrid to Rome.

pr99

I cannot really comment on the US internal airfares but what I would say about fares within Europe is

Point to point distances are often shorter than you might think. Straight line distances

LAX ATL 2,197 miles

LON DUB 279 miles
LON CDG 216 miles
LON AMS 222 miles
CDG FCO 685 miles
FCO ATH 676 miles
MAD GVA 628 miles
CDG GVA 220 miles

The shorter distances mean it is possible for the aircraft to do more rotations.

USD 20 seems low to me, it is very rare to see a oneway fare lower than GBP 20 (USD 30) including taxes. However what you have to realise is that these fares are;

• At inconvenient times - midweek 6am or 10pm take offs. They may need to operate this flight to position the aircraft for a higher revenue return flight or to hit passenger targets, also prices go up as the plane fills up. More convenient flight times on the same route with the same airline/aircraft are more expensive.
• There is a large variation in price between peak and off peak,
• Often the lowest fares are only available in one direction and the flights that it can be matched with coming back are more expensive.
• For the UK often the fares are more expensive outbound because the UK has a departures tax but no arrivals tax.
• Often these flights use airports that are second, third or fourth airports for a city and therefore much further away and less well connected to the City than closer associated airports. For example you might get a GBP 20 one way flight from London Stanstead airport but if the flight was to depart from London Gatwick it would be more than double the price and if it were to fly from London Heathrow or London City it would be more than triple the price. Sometimes these airports offer incentives for hitting passenger targets to new airlines and the service may get cancelled after the target period has finished.
• These prices tend to be offered by low cost carriers and do not include hold baggage, refreshments, seat selection and they charge you for not printing your own boarding card.

Sorry if the paragraph format comes out funny, Small screen to contend with.

DGAT1989

As far as Atlanta specifically, the truth is that Delta has a stranglehold on international fares from their ATL hub.They must have an "agreement": stay out of my playground. Just check any other gateway (ORD, BOS, JFK, MCO, MIA, etc) and you will see!

RustyC

Yeah, tell me about it. They really got their back arched at Qatar Airways coming in and flying non-stop to Doha, even though it's hard to imagine DL wanting to do that route.

You've also got other Skyteam flying to connect with DL, but they don't really compete on price. WN and NK can compete to Mexico and the Caribbean, but not much beyond. Also apparently not much appetite for UA or AA to have int'l flights leaving ATL, nor are many non-ST carriers outside the U.S. adding it as a spoke. QR did but no EY or EK as yet. Also no Chinese cheapies.