Athens is one of the top choices of affluent American tourists who plan to visit it within the next two years, according to MMGY’s annual study on American travelers published at leading travel magazine skift.com.
The study which has been conducted for more than 20 years, surveyed nearly 3,000 active leisure travelers online during February 2016. Respondents live in the U.S. and had an annual household income of at least $50,000 or more with 815 respondents having an annual household income of $125,000 or more. They also took at least one leisure trip of 75 miles or more from home during the previous 12 months and stayed in overnight accommodations. Respondents were nearly evenly distributed between males and females and between all generations.
U.S. traveler interest is high for visiting major European cities despite cities like Paris, Brussels and Istanbul having suffered several terrorist attacks during the past year. Paris remains one of the most interesting European cities to U.S. travelers with 30 percent of respondents expressing interest in visiting during the next two years. This is the first year MMGY asked respondents for their travel interest in visiting specific European cities.
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 question in 2015.
U.S. travelers with moderate to high incomes intend to take more vacations during 2016 than they’ve taken during any year for the past decade, the study found. Some 28 percent of American travelers with incomes of $50,000 or more plan to take more vacations than they did in 2015.
“Traveler intent and consumer confidence are in lockstep this year,” said Clayton Reid, president and CEO of MMGY Global. “We only survey people with incomes of at least $50,000 because these are people who have more money to travel and who do travel. With that in mind, not everyone will travel more as our data doesn’t account for American travelers that make less than $50,000 a year.”
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