Government layoffs affect official, leisure travel

Note: This story first appeared in Travel Weekly

NATIONAL REPORT – The Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), formed in January, initiated a sweeping campaign to streamline the federal government and slash spending, which has included eliminating thousands of jobs.

Further, a February 27 executive order took aim at federal employee travel, directing government agencies to prohibit travel without written and approved justification for the trip. The directive also requires that federal agencies, with assistance from DOGE, build a system that records approval for federally funded travel for conferences and other nonessential purposes.

Some clients of Susan Sheats, founder of World Exposures in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C., have begun to cancel trips. Their concerns range from not having an income to difficulty getting back into the country as a result of a federal government shutdown.

Sheats fears those cancellations are just “the tip of the iceberg.”

And while the effects of the job actions have been the most impactful in the D.C. area, where a concentration of federal employees live, the government employs people in communities around the country.

“It’s not just for travel agents in this region,” Sheats said. “It is for people all over our country. The middle market, I think, is going to be hit most.”

According to the Pew Research Center, as of November there were just over 3 million people employed by the federal government. That does not include active-duty military personnel, who number around 1.3 million.

Nearly 500,000 federal employees work in Washington, Maryland and Virginia, according to Pew. The rest are spread around the country; the largest contingents outside of the D.C. area can be found in the country's most populous states, California (147,500) and Texas (130,000).

Since Trump has taken office, thousands of federal employees have been fired or laid off (there is no official figure on the number of terminations). Wide-ranging layoffs of probationary employees, who have been on the job less than a year, have been ordered; the Associated Press reported hundreds of thousands could potentially be affected. Around 75,000 accepted an offer to leave their jobs with about eight months of paid leave.

And DOGE has promised deeper cuts to come.

The firings have had an impact on Safe Harbors Business Travel in Belcamp, Maryland. The agency serves a number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that were funded by the gutted U.S. Agency for International Development, said President Jay Ellenby.

In the aftermath of the USAID cuts, Safe Harbors scrambled to get all of its travelers home, which it did. But right now, Ellenby said, “everything is on hold” with those NGO clients.

Ellenby said that while Safe Harbors’ NGO business doesn’t constitute a majority of sales, it will impact the agency. But he has greater concerns for the industry.

“The ripple effect is immense,” he said. “Consumer confidence, with federal employees being cut, not-for-profits being reduced and cut, that will trickle down, whether it be corporate travel or certainly leisure travel.”

Clients cautious about travel

Sheats, who can see the Washington Monument from her home office, has a number of clients and neighbors who are current or former federal employees. Some have gotten nervous about traveling.

For instance, she had two clients planning trips to Italy this summer. They are federal contractors whose contracts were pulled, so they’ve opted to stay home.

In an email, one told Sheats, “I have no idea if I have an income.”

The same thing happened with a client of McCabe World Travel in McLean, Virginia, said Founder and CEO Damian McCabe. While that is the only cancellation the agency has seen related to shake-ups in the federal government, that client was also a government contractor whose contracts were pulled, McCabe said.

One of Sheats’ clients, a former federal employee, left her post last fall and now works in the private sector. She said in an interview that she planned to be in Costa Rica this month but opted to cancel over concerns about air travel chaos if Congress doesn’t arrive at a deal to fund the federal government by March 14.

Like Sheats, the client, who preferred to stay anonymous for professional reasons, predicted an impact to travel more widely based on federal employees’ loss of income.

“There’s a lot of chaos, and there’s a lot of anxiety,” she said. “I think people are just trying to figure out their plan B.”

She also predicted that consumers might be wary of anti-American sentiment abroad, something that she is personally concerned about, as well.

For one of Sheats’ clients, the government changes have inspired them to travel more -- to avoid being in the U.S. with the current administration in charge. The client recently booked a cruise in Tahiti, one of six trips he and his wife are planning this year.

“But,” Sheats said, “he has the money and the privilege to do that.”

Others don’t, and Sheats fears the trickle-down effect of DOGE’s actions on the millions of federal workers.

“How about all of their families?” she said. “All of the people that they pay -- a housekeeper, the gardener -- all those get fired. Everything topples.”

ASTA said it is monitoring changes at the federal level and gathering feedback from members, who have a “range of concerns.”

“Administrative actions regarding government contracts, federal workforce reductions, travel bans, trade policies, evolving passport designations and more -- while potentially significant -- remain fluid with outcomes yet to be fully defined,” the Society said.