Skift Take
International travel has been dramatically reduced all over the world, but getting the U.S. outbound market back to normal may be more challenging than elsewhere.
Americans have long been the butt of an international joke that they don't like to travel overseas.
But for the past few years, that accusation has been increasingly unfair. Outbound trips taken by Americans have increased steadily in the last decade or so, with a particularly precipitous rise in the last two years thanks to the strong dollar, reaching 97 million trips in 2019. Then, of course, came the force majeure that has disrupted everything in the travel industry — Covid 19 — including that reliable upward trend of of outbound American travel.
And as the dust begins to settle, though certainly not clear, it's apparent that some sizeable hurdles remain that may prevent U.S. outbound travel from returning to its previous levels. Some of these barriers — such as the somewhat rational fear of spending 12 hours on a plane with a bunch of strangers after a harrowing pandemic — are the same ones that will affect other countries' outbound tourism numbers. But others are uniquely American.
Tourism analytics firm Tourism Economics estimates that outbound trips will fall between 60 and 80 percent globally in 2020, with U.S. outbound trips falling around 70 percent. The American Society of Travel Advisors sent a letter to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention this week outlining some of
