Home Sweet Home

By Scott Feldman

Did you go away for Thanksgiving? How about somewhere warm this Winter? Our latest News 12 Long Island/Hofstra poll reveals a lot of Long Islanders are staying close to home. Not hard to figure out why. Now that a recession has officially been declared, 41% of you told us you have no plans to go on a vacation in the near future. 24% will take a vacation, but 17% say they will spend less. And 15% won't be taking a vacation anytime soon. I was talking to Ellie Dayton, the owner of Total Travel Management in Uniondale, about all of this. She puts it very succinctly: "Travel is based on discretionary money and right now there isn't any." At a sandwich shop near News 12, I ran into Uri Rud. He told me he spent Thanksgiving with his sister in Toronto. But he didn't fly--he took the train. It was a lot longer, of course, but a lot less expensive. At a table nearby, Joe Squatrigo from Brentwood says trips to Las Vegas are just a memory. As he put it, "I'm a senior citizen, so I don't go nowhere right now, I can't afford it." And Ellen Forman from Jericho says the only reason she is flying to Aruba tomorrow is because she owns a time share there. Otherwise, she tells me, "If we didn't have the time share, we wouldn't be going away." Total Travel's Dayton says many Long Island travel agencies are either closing their doors or moving out of commercial space and doing business from home. She's managing to stay afloat with corporate business. So, when does she think things will turn around? All I got was a shrug of the shoulders and a look that said your guess is as good as mine. "Right now, Ellie says, the future is very precarious."