Alabama Tourism is expecting growth in 2025. The state is branding this year as the Year of Alabama trails spotlighting birdwatching, waterfalls, and other natural attractions. The American Automobile Association predicted one hundred and nineteen million motorists heading somewhere around Christmas and New Years. We asked Triple-A spokesman Clay Ingram to read the tea leaves going into 2025. He says a good 2024 could mean record breaking travel this year…
“I think it's really a no brainer to know that we're going to set a record for this year (2024.) And I think 2025 is going to be very similar, unless something drastic happens. You know, of course, we have another pandemic knock on wood,” he said.
Ingram says in a high stress post COVID world, pent up vacation demand is likely to keep Americans planning time off, especially during Alabama’s lucrative tourism season in the summer. That, he says, could set the stage for record travel this year.
“We have such fast paced, busy lives. It's a vacation nowadays seems to be more of a necessity than a luxury, and most people are willing to sacrifice other things throughout the year to be able to get away a couple times each year,” Ingram said.
Ingram tempered that prediction by saying another national crisis like COVID could impact travel numbers. A 2023 report by the Congressional Research Service says, in 2019, the last year before the coronavirus disease pandemic, tourism directly accounted for 6.4 million American jobs. Although that figure declined to 3.5 million jobs in 2020 (during the outbreak.)
