I am indebted to Joe Sharkey of the New York Times for this little statistic:
Business travel accounts for about $165 billion of the roughly $700 billion spent each year on domestic travel.

Now, if my math is correct, that means that $535 billion -- that's billion, with a "B" -- is spent each year on NON-business travel, a.k.a. leisure travel, the kind home-based travel agents sell. Remember, too, that we're talking domestic travel here. International travel is a whole other multi-billion-dollar ball of wax.

So what's the point?

Simply that people are always trying to "prove" that home-based travel agents can't make money. For a while it was the Internet that was going to kill us off. And yet the home-based sector is the most vibrant and fastest growing segment of the travel distribution system.

Now some people are pointing to the slide of the dollar against major currencies like the pound and the euro. (Heck, the slide of the dollar against all currencies.)

"Looks like people aren't going to be traveling as much," they'll tell you, perhaps with a self-satisfied smirk.

Rubbish! Sure, some people will look at the exchange rate and cross that European trip off their list. But many more will dig a little deeper to make that special trip happen. Then, too, foreign governments (unlike our own) recognize the value of foreign visitors and will take step to make trips more affordable for newly impoversished Americans.

And let us not forget that, for the top ten percent or so of the U.S. population, the recent decline of the dollar and the resulting rise in the cost of foreign travel represents the merest pin prick. And the top ten percent represents 35 million people! That's a pretty big market.

But more to the point, the statistic cited above refers to purely domestic travel, where the dollar's weakness simply doesn't apply. Just because some people may decide that Europe's too expensive doesn't mean they're going to deny themselves or their family a vacation this year. They just become part of that $535 billion chunk of the the domestic leisure travel market. How big a slice of a $535 billion market would you need to be happy? I'll save you from doing the math by simply pointing out that, in percentage terms, it's teensy-weensy, itty-bitty.

Finally, what goes up must come down. Eventually, our free-spending, fiscally irresponsible government, which seems to have abandoned all the laws of financial physics that apply to real people, will come to its senses. Or the people will come to theirs and "throw the bums out." When fiscal sanity once again reigns in the land, the dollar will become the strong currency it once was.

So, please, no griping and no whining. And when "well-meaning" friends try to commiserate with you about how impossible it's going to be for you to make a buck, just remind yourself that some people, who will never have the guts to create their own business, try to make themselves feel better by trying to tear down those who do.