The State of the American Traveler in February 2024

While Gen Z and Millennial travelers are holding on to Recession fears at a greater rate than older generations, they nevertheless remain optimistic about their future financial wellness. In fact, Millennial travelers continue to be the likeliest to say that the present is a good time to spend on travel and that travel is a high priority for them in their personal budgets (after all, they did popularize the term ‘YOLO’). Across the country, travelers in the Northeast express the most positive financial sentiment, reporting above average travel budgets and prioritizing travel more relative to other regions. In terms of current travel deterrents, personal financial reasons now lead the reasons why Americans are not venturing out as much as they would have otherwise preferred, which is up almost 4 points in the past month alone. Travel being too expensive is the second most cited travel deterrent (34.7%), although the proportion of Americans selecting this has declined 3 points compared to last month. In good news, gasoline prices appear to be declining as a travel barrier. Just 4 months ago, 35.9% cited gas prices as a reason for not traveling more which is now down 11 points to 24.6%. That said, looking at regional differences, its clear that travelers who reside in the West are grappling with high gas prices more so than other regions (29.7% of travelers in the West cite gas being too expensive compared just 17.4% of Northeast travelers). Travel volume remains healthy. In January this year, 55.4% of American travelers reported taking an overnight trip—up from 50.1% in January 2023. Americans’ excitement for travel is at the same strong level it was in January 2023 (8.0 on a scale from 0-10). The average American traveler anticipates they will take 3.6 leisure trips in the next year, up from 3.2 reported in January 2023. Over 83% of American travelers report having trips already planned.

Streaming services and podcasts have surged in popularity among travelers in recent years, with Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu the most commonly used with regularity, and platforms like YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts serving as primary destinations for podcast consumption. The majority of travelers still engage with traditional media channels, such as magazines and news outlets. People, Travel & Leisure, and AARP are the most commonly reported magazines while television networks like ABC, CBS, Fox, and CNN remain staples in the average traveler's media diet. When asked about the most effective means of inspiring travel, travelers report email campaigns, search engine marketing, and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok reign supreme. As with media consumption habits, offline resources—particularly travel magazines--still play an important role in travel planning, with over 40% reporting using an offline resource to plan a recent trip. Nearly one in five American travelers used a travel agent or advisor to assist in their travel planning in the past 12 months, led by Millennials and Gen Z-age travelers. Additionally, Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) served as recent trip planning resources for over 35% of American travelers, led by their websites.

While not as common as relaxation or visiting friends and relatives, romance is still an important second-tier reason Americans travel. In fact, 15.3% of American travelers report it was the motivator for their most recent overnight trip. The majority of these travelers headed to city destinations for these trips, and focused on restaurants, shopping and content for their social media. Romance travelers skew Millennial and Gen Z-age and are optimistic about their future trip volume and spending. They also tend to be a bit more impulsive, reporting lower than average trip-planning windows.

In Future Partners' recent survey of meeting planners for our annual The CVB and the Future of the Meetings Industry study, one of the top trends planners anticipate is the aging out of Baby Boomer meeting attendees and the rise of younger Gen Z conference goers. Because of this, planners note that they need to adjust their content strategies to attract and engage younger audiences. The latest findings from our The State of the American Traveler study supports this. A much higher proportion of Gen Z and Millennial-age travelers say they have taken an overnight trip in the past month to attend a conference/group meeting (26.5% and 21.1% vs 10.7% and 2.2% for Gen X and Baby Boomers, respectively) and looking ahead, a larger proportion of the youngest traveler generations plan to travel for conventions in the next 3 months (22.9% Gen Z, 24.4% Millennial, compared to 14.9% Gen X and 5.5% Baby Boomers).

Source: Future Partners: State of the American Traveler. February 13th, 2024