Weekend Travel Deals For Memorial Day 2012 Still There, Consumers Shy Away From Air Travel

Last-minute Memorial Day weekend travel deals are still available, and a bit of foreknowledge about where, why and how can help you score a sweet bargain in the hours before the holiday weekend kicks off.

One of the upsides to this persistent economic downturn is travel deals, because far fewer people have the disposable income to even take a trip for a weekend, much less a pricier holiday weekend.

And when consumers do have to travel, prices for airfare in particular would be comically high compared to those of just a few years ago, were they not so tragic.

High fuel prices and low demand are making weekend travel deals hard to find, but in the last days before you’d like to get away, you can get lucky and find an offer that is- for today’s pricing standards- not too bad.

MarketWatch spoke to George Hobica, founder of travel site AirfareWatchdog.com. Hobica explained that consumers are still a bit wary of flying in the current financial climate and due to far, far higher prices, but that we can expect the high fares to be here to stay because airlines aren’t going to stop charging more for flights:

“Consumers haven’t quite adjusted to the fact that it’s a new day for the airlines, which now have pricing power that they didn’t have before. Eventually consumers will get with the program and realize that the airlines have been under-pricing their products for decades.”

For flying alone, last-minute weekend travel deals reveal pricing as low as 5-14% lower than last year’s average flight prices.