Guess who's not coming to dinner?

Amid slump, holiday travel plans stall

(Pat Vasquez-Cunningham for The Boston Globe) Polly White (above, right), admissions coordinator at the Desert Academy in Santa Fe, N.M., laments that her daughter Ariel will not fly home from Emerson College this Thanksgiving. Many others also say holiday travel is out.

It's not that Polly White doesn't love her daughter, but with the slumping economy, paying for Ariel to fly home this Thanksgiving is out of the question.

Instead, the Emerson College junior will remain on the East Coast while 30 of her relatives and friends in Santa Fe enjoy a festive dinner.

The $700 airfare "feels almost like an extravagance at this point," Polly White lamented. Instead, she plans to hold up a cellphone at dinner so everyone can shout out well wishes to Ariel. That's little consolation for her daughter, who says she is used to being home "where parents pay for everything."

Thanksgiving won't be the same for many families across the country this year. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression is expected to put a crimp in the busiest travel season of the year. Fewer people, especially college students, will be going home because of plummeting portfolios, job losses, and rising travel costs. That's moved many families in Massachusetts to open their homes to holiday orphans, and restau rants to prepare for more customers.

The trend is particularly pronounced in a college town like Boston. The city is brimming with students who generally depend on their parents to fund their holiday trips home.

Beyond the general economic downturn, high airfares will also keep many from home: Holiday fares are at five-year highs, according to Farecast, an airfare tracking website. And the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan International Airport in Boston, is predicting a 6 percent to 10 percent decline in Boston passengers during the week surrounding Thanksgiving.

"With absolute certainty, there will be a lesser number of flyers," said David Castelveter, vice president of communications for the Air Transport Association, an industry trade group.

Sally McMahon is certain of this: She won't be flying her daughter, Rebecca, home to Sandwich for the holidays. Rebecca is a freshman studying to be a physician's assistant at Daemen College in Amherst, N.Y. McMahon, a homemaker, said this year's heating oil bill ruled out the $400 round-trip airfare from New York.

"We had the tank filled a month ago for $3.46 a gallon and we bought 150 gallons - there's the plane tickets right there," McMahon said.

To give her daughter the feeling of home, she's planning to send a couple of homemade apple pies to New York. "Poor child, she wants a homemade pie from her mother."

Still, Rebecca McMahon said she'll miss other things about being home for Thanksgiving: "I love mashed potatoes - they're like my favorite food in the world."

Since she can't go home to Minnesota this year, BU student Andra Skaalard will for the first time be cooking turkey and "stuffing - we're big stuffing people" with her two roommates in Boston and not with her family. She said her mom and stepdad couldn't stomach the airfare of nearly $800 - about $300 more than they paid in years past.

"This time it's just not worth it - that much money for five days," Skaalard said.

College students aren't the only people who are planning to stay put. The expense of flying the Westwood family of four to Fairfax, Va., deterred Cecilia Lahiff, 48, from shuttling her husband and twin 8-year-old boys to her parents' place this holiday. It would have cost about $1,300.

Paying that was out of the question for Lahiff, the founder of Lahiff Communications, a public relations firm, who said the tough economy has driven down revenue at her company.

"My kids aren't going to see their grandparents," said Lahiff, who plans to take her family - and a turkey - to their friend Nancy Sterling's house.

But not everyone has somewhere to go for the holidays. So restaurants - and families who plan to open their homes up to strays - are expecting to be busier than ever.

Boston University, which closes all of its dorms that aren't equipped with kitchens, has a deal with Hotel Commonwealth that allows students who remain in Boston to stay at the luxury hotel for $40 a night. Typical room rates at the hotel start at around $300 a night.

"We'll probably have over 200 students at the hotel," said Marc Robillard, director of housing at the university.

Also anticipating an influx of college students in Boston, chef Tom Berry at the Temple Bar in Cambridge switched his usual, pricier Thanksgiving a la carte items, which cost around $25 each, to a Turkey Day menu that's a fixed, three-course menu for $45. Berry plans to order 15 to 20 turkeys this year to accommodate more diners, instead of the 10 he ordered last year.

Likewise, Thomas J. Kinton Jr. of Winchester is expecting a rush of undergraduates around the family dinner table this year. Kinton's daughters, both students at Boston College, always extend an invitation to friends who aren't traveling home.

Kinton is expecting a crowd this year since people aren't flying as much. He should know: He's the chief executive of Massport.

"The invitation's always out there, if any of their friends want to join us," Kinton said.

As for Ariel White, the Emerson student will trade her dad's "crazy beatnik friends from the '60s" to have dinner with her half-sister in New Brunswick, N.J., and twin 3-year-old nephews. But Christmas, she says, will be different: "I'm coming home for Christmas. You can't stop me. I'll walk."