TOURISM: The Rush to Stay at Home

With Mardi Gras only a week away, Frank Fullmer should be both busy and prosperous. His 53-room Bel-Air Motel (heated swimming pool, free color TV in every room) on a major highway into New Orleans is strategically located to catch the annual stampede of carnival-bound tourists. This year, however, fully one-third of his rooms are empty. "We ought to be filling up about now," he frets. "I guess people just don't want to take a chance this year."

Like thousands of other proprietors of motels, restaurants, travel agencies, airlines, resorts and ski areas from New Orleans to Nice, Fullmer is a casualty of the world fuel shortage. The traveling public, beset by uncertainty over flight cancellations, filling-station closings and gasoline-rationing schemes, is staying home in droves. As a result, the travel industry, which accounts for $60 billion a year in the U.S. alone, is hav ing one of its most chilling winters.

In the Western U.S., where gasoline is still relatively plentiful, winter resorts are generally still busy. But in the Northeast, about two-thirds of the ski areas are reporting smaller crowds. Many operators have been able to attract the ski ers they do get only by buying gas stations or promising to fill the visitors' tanks once they arrive. In Vermont, where skiing is the largest industry, statewide unemployment has risen to 7%. Only 25 people were on the payroll two weeks ago at Glen Ellen—down from 125 a year earlier.

Vermont ski executives blame their troubles as much on a fairly snowless winter as on the gasoline crunch. Yet in western Massachusetts, which was covered with snow last week, the slopes are still underpopulated. Said Ted Trombley as he surveyed the empty parking lot of his Yankee Motor Lodge near Pittsfield: "Up until now we could blame the weather. But with this gorgeous weekend we just had, we're still off 50%, so we know the problem has to be gas."

In Florida, where 80% of all tourists arrive by car, hotel bookings are down 15%. Attendance at Walt Disney World near Orlando is off 6%, and the amusement park has had to lay off about 750 workers. Florida tourism officials bought space in out-of-state newspapers last month to boast that there was plenty of gasoline available in the state. Some visitors to the gas-short Miami area, which started rationing last week, have found no such plenitude. Jim Komer arrived in Miami from Kitchener, Ont., with his wife and another couple, but could not buy more than $2 worth of gasoline at a time for his rented Lincoln. Komer's foursome cut their vacation short last week and returned to Canada, where, he says, "there's lots of gasoline."

Despite the dollar's recent gain in value against many foreign currencies, which gives it more purchasing power outside the U.S., fewer Americans are traveling abroad these days. The State Department reports that passport applications were down 16% in January from last year. So far this winter, Spain's Costa del Sol has had 50,000 fewer visitors than expected. Only 30% of the rooms at the Rome Hilton were filled last month, against 45% the January before, and Hertz auto rentals in the Eternal City are off nearly 20%.