‘Staycation’ The New Buzzword for Summer 2008

In the classic Bill Murray movie “What About Bob?”, title character and uber-neurotic Bob Wiley is advised to “take a vacation from your problems” by his uptight psychiatrist Dr. Leo Marvin (played to the hilt by Richard Dreyfuss).

Dr. Marvin was just trying to keep Bob from screwing up his appearance on “Good Morning America,” but he may have been on to something.

A new word has entered the American vocabulary in response to ever-increasing fuel and food prices: Staycation.

A new survey from Rand McNally has determined that 57 percent of Americans are planning to shorten or cancel summer trips in response to gas prices that have now topped $4 per gallon on average.

Retailers across the country are trying to capitalize on the “staycation” concept, encouraging people to improve their patios, upgrade their grill and grill accessories and find other ways to have fun in the sun without leaving home.

But of course, no retailer is taking it further than Wal-Mart Stores Inc. A June 8 report in the Financial Times stated Wal-Mart filed an application with the U.S. Patent Office to trademark the word “staycation” in mid-May.

(As an aside, the FT story pointed the coining of the word “staycation” to a Canadian comedy show “Corner Gas.” The owner of the namesake service station takes a vacation each year in the field across from his store. Hunter Walk, an Internet product manager, bought the Web address staycation.com in 2005. Visiting the address directs you to Walk’s blog, where he notes Wal-Mart may now be interested in buying the domain from him. “Maybe I should ping their legal firm and see if Wal-Mart wants to make me an offer …” he writes.)

On June 11, the Bentonville retailer announced 10 percent to 25 percent rollbacks on everything from Bush’s Baked Beans to Ballpark Franks to patio sets, plasma TVs and the Apple iPod Shuffle (marked down 40 percent to $48.72).

It has even launched a Yahoo! widget calendar on its Web site featuring the “101 Days of Staycation” with a different tip, idea or recipe for each day.

Among them: encouraging kids to plant a patio vegetable garden or open a lemonade stand and reminding customers June is “National Soul Food Month” (complete with ribs recipe). There are also suggestions to donate to local food banks, drop off recycling and replace standard light bulbs with compact fluorescents.

Wal-Mart Shareholders Scream Loud, ‘Proud’

Cleaning out the notebook from Wal-Mart’s shareholders meeting on June 6 …

• Wal-Mart International vice chairman Mike Duke announced division sales are expected to top $100 billion for the first time in fiscal 2009.
• Three divisions were honored as finalists for the Sam M. Walton Entrepreneur Award (the sustainability team took the top prize). The “site-to-store” team, started in 2004, generated $400 million in sales from walmart.com last year; the grocery team has reduced checkout lines by 33 percent in the last 12 months; and the inventory planning and replenishment team earned a mention for being $1 billion under projected first quarter inventory, which led to a 0.5 percent improvement in both in-stocks and return-on-investment.
• Like an episode of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, it appeared “proud” was the secret word. Any time it was uttered from the stage, the thousands in attendance roared in approval. Just guessing, but the constant interruptions were probably the reason the meeting ran 20 minutes long.