Staycations for everyone!
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Online bookings for travel are down. Major airlines are reducing flight schedules as leisure travelers pull back. And now there’s more bad news for the tourism sector: High-spending business travelers are cutting back, as well. Later in the program: why Bank of America is investing in physical branches and how a technical program near the Texas-Louisiana coast is training young people for "gold-collar" chemical and petrochemical production jobs.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Straight talk here. Federal funding for public media is at risk of being eliminated. That seriously affects our 800 local public radio stations that broadcast Marketplace, and that in turn impacts our bottom line. Marketplace needs your help to plan for an uncertain future. And to continue bringing you the news, interviews, and stories about the economy |
| 0:21.8 | as it changes, every donation right now has a profound impact. Please give what you can at marketplace.org |
| 0:29.1 | slash donate and thank you. Even business travel went quiet as spring began. |
| 0:39.8 | I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. |
| 0:44.6 | We're tracking the lull in travel that occurred following President Trump's tariffs on, |
| 0:46.5 | tariffs off announcements last month. |
| 0:51.6 | Travel bookings down, airline flights down, leisure travel fell, and there's new data showing higher spending business travelers are staying home. Marketplace's |
| 0:55.6 | Nova Saffo reports. |
| 0:57.7 | The National Travel and Tourism Office tracks airline and ship passengers entering the U.S., |
| 1:02.5 | and it found a marked slowdown in April among business travelers. |
| 1:07.2 | Overall, trips declined 9%. |
| 1:09.7 | Business travel from Western Europe plummeted 18%, and from Mexico, by air, it fell 12%. |
| 1:17.6 | The preliminary data does not include Canadian crossings. |
| 1:21.3 | The data also does not indicate what caused the decline, but it comes amid tariff uncertainties |
| 1:27.0 | and growing concerns among foreign |
| 1:28.6 | visitors about getting arrested at border crossings. Several European countries and Canada |
| 1:34.5 | have issued new travel advisories for the U.S. I'm Novosafo for Marketplace. |
| 1:40.2 | In a world where you can scan in a check with your phone and money comes out of walls, we note that Bank of America this week said it is opening 150 new brick and mortar branches. |
| 1:50.7 | Its expansion in existing markets mainly, Boise, Idaho is one of the new markets. |
| 1:55.3 | So the bank teller is not like the toll booth operator, a job of the past. Marketplaces Stephanie Hughes has that. |
| 2:02.4 | About three years ago, the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates from near zero. |
| 2:07.1 | That meant banks were paying more interest on things like money market accounts and CDs. |
... |
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