Profile of a Road Trip Family

Family road trippers enjoy scenic drives and National parks. They don't sweat the gas prices, they prefer road atlases to GPS devices (although many like both), and they have a sense of humor.

We've been studiously collecting data from familyroadtripper.com visitors since our site launch three years ago and have recently compiled the date into this interesting blog post. While these data in no way represent a scientific analysis of the real world, they do provide a good topic for a blog post.

We've run single-question polls in the left rail of the blog and also a multi-question survey at surveymonkey.com. The highest response rates came from the poll questions right on the page:

Favorite road trip destinations:
Scenic drives: 30%
National Parks/ Monuments: 23%
Mountain cities and towns: 23%
Coastal cities and towns: 7%
Ski resort mountains: 15%
Big cities: 0%

How will higher gas prices affect your summer road trip plans?
Not at all: 19%
Stay closer to home: 11%
Buy a Prius: 11%
Fewer days on the road: 5%
Cheaper hotels: 4%

GPS or Road Atlas?
Road Atlas: 50%
Both: 36%
GPS: 13%

Why don't you answer polls?
My choice never wins: 37%
Don't trust polls: 25%
Too much work: 25%
Hate you: 12%

We're a little surprised that 12% of our readers hate us, but we suspect it may simply be that they have a warped sense of humor. Perhaps we won't include that choice in future polls.

The online survey told us that most of our readers (79%) have one or two kids and they take three or more road trip each year. They stay mostly in the 100 mile - 300 mile range, but quite a few (20%) go for the 300 - 600 mile range, and the same amount exceed 600 miles on a road trip. They typically stay in motels, although brand loyalty isn't the top priority, safe, clean, and convenient is.

We also learned how to word questions poorly
'Do you travel with pets?'
10% travel with a dog, 5% with more than one cat, and 85% probably would have answered 'No' had I provided that as a choice. Instead, they didn't answer the question.