Deseret News | The 'staycationers' — Cost-conscious vacationers simulate travel

The 'staycationers' — Cost-conscious vacationers simulate travel

By Mary Pilon
The Wall Street Journal

Published: Sunday, July 20, 2008 12:11 a.m. MDT

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Karen Ash is about to take a weeklong Japanese vacation. She'll buy postcards and souvenirs at a traditional Japanese market. She'll admire bonsai plants and view Japanese films. She'll eat ramen, ordering in Japanese.

And she'll never leave the Bronx.

Ash, a legal assistant who lives in that New York City borough, called off her plans to travel to Japan this summer. The ballooning cost of airfares, weak dollar-to-yen exchange rate and difficulty saving travel money while keeping pace with bills forced her to rethink her summer plans. So she's determined to have the ultimate "staycation," or vacation spent at home.

While more hard-pressed Americans are spending their vacation time at home lately, not everyone is happy about it. Barbecues and reruns don't match the thrill of travel. So some are going to great lengths to foster the illusion of a wayfaring vacation. They'll sample foreign tourism, wilderness camping, hotel living and beach-going without ever leaving their living rooms.

Some entrepreneurs have even developed new businesses to help faux-travelers with the ruse. Bob Porter, a literary editor from Pacific City, Ore., for one, has taken on the additional career of staycation planner.

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Last spring, a friend of Porter complained that he was too broke to travel, so Porter, as a joke, furnished his apartment like a hotel. He plugged in a TV, hung "Do Not Disturb" signs and even placed fresh soaps and towels in the bathroom. Since the joke, word-of-mouth has spread. Porter has repeated the hotel stunt 11 times since April, sparking a small business. For two nights of the faux-hotel experience, he charges $50 to $60. (He buys the items from real hotels.)

He's expanded to include room service (delivery from a local restaurant), offering wake-up calls and maid service. "I really need to buy one of those maid carts like they really use at a hotel," he said. He'll plug in a stocked mini fridge and hang pastel-toned paintings of the ocean on the walls. The toilet seat bears the sealing strip of paper across the lid and seat, ensuring recent sanitization. A Gideon Bible rests in the nightstand drawer.

Most of Porter's clients are young couples "who see the humor in it" and are coping with the high cost of travel. Often, the hotel stunt is a surprise. One of his customers hired Porter to revamp their home while his wife was out. When she returned, he told her, "This is as close to vacation as we're gonna get."

The Bason family in Oakland, Calif., passed on their trip to Hawaii this year for a camp-out in their living room. Clem Bason and his wife, Francoise Barton, set up a tent in their living room (the yard was too small) so that their 3-year-old and 1-year-old sons wouldn't miss out on the adventure of travel. They cooked s'mores over a candle and ate hot dogs prepared in the kitchen. Camp stories were read in the tent. And Bason took a lamp from his older son's room and placed it in the living room to create the effect of moonlight on a summer's night.