The answer seems to be: No.
The Pontiac Daily Leader decided to check with the Illinois Route 66 Hall of Fame and Museum in Pontiac to see whether tourism numbers are down from a year ago, when gasoline cost about a $1-a-gallon less.
This May, 1,238 people visited it, a 77 percent increase over the 699 who stopped in during May 2007. This April’s visits, 745, was more than twice the 357 total for April 2007.
One likely reason for the increase in May 2008 was that the museum is open more hours than a year ago during prime tourist season. […]
As of 2 p.m. Friday, the museum had had visits for that day of 19 people, traveling in 13 parties. Four were from Kansas, others were from Florissant, Mo., Racine, Wis., and Cincinnati.
But there also were visitors from Fox Lake, Tinley Park, Plainfield and Carol Stream — possible examples of one kind of visitor that expensive gas might encourage: “staycationers.” […] The word has no dictionary definition, but refers to people who take shorter trips instead of more long-distance ones.
Visitors from Illinois have increased dramatically from April and May of 2007 to those months this year: from 190 to 497 for the Aprils and from 435 to 843 for the two Mays. Karls said increased interest in the museum and Route 66, plus the increased hours, is a likely explanation for the increase. […]
Pontiac’s motels provide another statistical source of how Pontiac tourism is faring. Motel taxes for April were up 9 percent from that month in 2007, and they are up for calendar year 2008 as a whole, compared to the same months of 2007.
The story goes on to say that participation in the annual Illinois Route 66 Motor Tour was down. But the number of foreign travelers visiting the museum is way up, no doubt spurred to travel here by the weak U.S. dollar.
Those observations match others I’ve heard along the road — that the number of domestic tourists is stable or down slightly, but the number of foreign tourists is up. So it’s even-Steven or even a net gain.
High gas prices are not stopping me. In fact, I am looking forward to crossing the border from Ontario Canada into the USA so that I can take advantage of your cheap gas prices. Starting July 8th I will be on Route 66 for a 4 week vacation.