With COVID-19 canceling many vacations, how did Whatcom residents spend the summer?
With COVID-19 putting the kibosh on many planned vacations this summer, the alternative for many Whatcom County residents who wanted to get out of the house was a road trip.
Long-distance road trips were up 45.1% for Whatcom County residents in early August, while overall travel was down significantly, much in line with the national trends. That’s according to a study done by seoClarity, which looked at U.S. Department of Transportation data, focusing on the first two weeks of August 2020 and comparing it to August 2019. The company specifically looked at the number of 100- to 500-mile road trips taken during that period.
Whatcom County’s road trip percentage increase was higher than the national average of 37.6%, according to the study. The federal government uses mobile device information and several other data sources to come up with its estimates.
Given the state of things during this pandemic, hopping in a car and driving somewhere like a campsite or an Airbnb property became Plan B for many this summer. With Whatcom County being in Phase 2 of Washington state’s Safe Start program, residents were asked to do only limited non-essential travel.
The change in travel plans also shows up in airport data. In August, 7,297 people flew out of the Bellingham International Airport, according to data from the Port of Bellingham. In August 2019 a total of 31,723 people used the airport for travel.
According to the study, total travel among Whatcom residents dropped 38.7% in the first two weeks of August, which is a bigger than the national average decline of 32.7%.
People visiting Whatcom County this summer also mostly did so by taking a road trip, said Sandy Ward, CEO and president of Bellingham Whatcom County Tourism. She believes most of the visitors came from the greater Seattle area, but anecdotally the organization was noticing license plates from all over the country.
The road trip phenomenon was not as strong in nearby major cities. Seattle only saw a 2.5% increase in road trips, while Portland, Oregon, was up 26.7%.
