Experts in the travel industry are saying that whereas the popularity of air travel will continue in its steady decline over the Thanksgiving holiday period the amount of people turning to car hire is on the increase. Vice president of leisure business development at the car rental firm Enterprise Rent A Car, Steve Short says that people are taking advantage of car hire not only to make it home to visit family and friends but also to drive to local shopping centers in order to stock up on the bargains being made available on the Friday after the holiday.

Nick Maniscalco who also works for Enterprise said that the number of people making use of their rental vehicles over the holiday period was up by twelve percent this year. He said that there had been an increase in the trend for customers picking up rental vehicles for short burst vacations and shopping trips over the last year.

Enterprise have said that they will be offering customers up to a fifty percent discount on cars rented from Friday and returned to them by Monday.

U.S. airlines are also doing all they can to accommodate passengers who are trying to get home for Thanksgiving. Travel expert Terry Trippler of Trippler and Associates says that a number of carriers will allow passengers who have booked themselves on flights to go onto a standby list if they wish to catch an earlier flight. Delta Airlines, Continental Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines are all carriers which permit travellers to rebook their flights as well as go onto standby for an earlier flight, he said.