7 Charts Showing Americans’ Travel Intentions for 2016 and Beyond
Photo Credit: Tourists at Buckingham Palace in London for the Changing of the Guard ceremony. London is the European city that garnered the most interest in a recent study of U.S. travelers. Skift / Dan Peltier
Skift Take
MMGY's annual study shows that Americans are resilient in the face of terrorism and other adverse factors at home and abroad and are also planning to make 2016 one of the better years for travel in recent memory.
Many travel brands believe 2016 will be one of the better years for American travelers for domestic and international trips and spending since the Great Recession began in 2008.
Several signs point to that scenario already playing out. (Even if it may have reached its peak, as some argue)
The U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office, for example, said this week that U.S. travelers spent more than $55 billion on trips abroad between January and March compared to spending more than $54 billion between January and March 2015 (a one percent increase year-over-year). And according to the U.S. Travel Association, $55 billion is half of the total amount ($110 billion) U.S. travelers spent on trips abroad in 2015.
One of the biggest affirmations: respondents part of MMGY Global's 2016 Portrait of American Travelers study said, on average, they plan to spend $5,048 on vacations during 2016. That's an 11.5 percent increase from what they said they would spend when MMGY asked the same
