Will you be one of the 39 million Labor Day travelers?

Labor Day is almost upon us, and the American Automobile Association (AAA) predicts that the number of travelers taking advantage of the three-day weekend this year will fall by about 13.3 percent over last year. AAA projects that only 39.1 million Americans will hit the roads (rails or skies) during the 2009 holiday — despite the fact that average gasoline prices are a dollar cheaper this year.

The travel association figures part of the anticipated decline can be attributed to the fact that more children throughout the country will be back in school before Labor Day, because the holiday falls at a later date this year. In 2008, Labor Day fell on September 1, a full week earlier and before many school districts in other parts of the country returned to school. By September 7, most school terms will have started.

Still, AAA thinks more people will travel over Labor Day than they did over this year’s July 4^th holiday.   AAA categorizes Labor Day travel as journeys Americans take that are more than 50 miles from their homes between Thursday, September 3 and Monday, September 7.

Because most Georgia students traditionally return to their desks by early to mid-August, Labor Day’s date doesn’t often change our travel plans. We treat Labor Day as the first chance of the new school year to get away for a little more warm weather fun.

Labor Day deals abound on the Internet, with price points and destinations to fit a wide variety of traveling budgets. Hotel rooms from Nashville to New Orleans and throughout Florida have been drastically reduced for this weekend on expedia.com.  Airfare and hotel packages to locales outside of our region from Vancouver, British Columbia and Las Vegas, NV to Kauai Island, Hawaii have also been slashed.  For more information on deals or ideas for Labor Day travels, check out Budget Traveler’s website or AJC.com’s travel page.  

In addition, Orbitz.com notes that the costs of hotel rooms have fallen significantly year over year in the country’s top Labor Day destinations, with savings of 22 percent in New York and up to 33 percent in Seattle. Orbitz’s top ten destinations for this Labor Day include Las Vegas, New York City, Cancun, Honolulu, Chicago, Atlanta (#6 on the list), San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego and Paris, France.

Will you be traveling this Labor Day weekend? How far will you go? Will you travel by car, train or plane? Did you find any great deals for the holiday weekend?