Though there was a lot of talk about people feeling financially pinched through last year, some new research shows Americans still have a strong desire to travel in 2025.
The Winter Edition of MMGY’s Portrait of American Travelers study found nearly eight out of 10 U.S. adults plan to take a vacation within the next 12 months, a 7% increase compared to the winter of 2023. They also plan to spend more of their disposable income on travel. The survey found the average vacation budget grew to $5,051, with a travel frequency of 4.1 trips per person.
The story of American travelers in 2025 is good news, said Simon Moriarty, vice president of research and analytics at MMGY Travel Intelligence. There’s a broad uptick in travel interest, both in numbers of people and the number of trips.
Immediately after the pandemic, people were making the most of everything they missed over the previous two years, and that led to revenge travel, he said. That trend has fallen back, and over the past year, people spent time thinking about what it is they want out of their leisure trips and what’s important to them.
“They’re thinking about the priorities when it comes to taking trips and then really kind of investing the time and effort and making those trips as good as they can be, hitting all of the marks that they've set themselves,” he said. “It’s where they want to go, who they want to travel with, who they want to see and how it fits into their budget.”
People are still struggling financially, both in the U.S. and globally, so they’re counting their pennies and making sure not to overextend themselves, Moriarty said. Even so, they're making sure they have a budget for travel. They’re spending more on travel because, in part, it’s more expensive than it was before, but they’re prioritizing it. They want to go places they haven’t been before and get new memories.
It harkens back to when people couldn’t travel for a few years and any idea of even getting out of the house or going to another city felt big, he said.
“We’ve come out of that now fully where it’s about travel for travel’s sake,” he said. “It’s about the experiences and about the benefits. It’s not about trying to recover from a period of uncertainty. It’s about understanding and embracing travel.”
Brand loyalty
MMGY’s survey also found there was an increase in brand loyalty across the travel industry. Hotel loyalty programs grew 6% since 2023, and airlines loyalty program membership jumped by 8%.
While the airlines saw greater growth, Moriarty said he thinks hotels are in a better position because travelers who have increased loyalty or engaged more did so out of a conscious decision about the benefits of that program or hotel. That’s because there are so many hotels and hotel brands to choose among. With airlines, travelers are sometimes more restricted in the available choices.
“There's only a certain number of airlines that go to certain destinations, so your use of the airline is often because there's not as much flexibility as when it comes to hotels,” he said.
With hotels, there’s more opportunity for loyalty to be tied more to the experience of a specific trip at a specific time, he said. For budget hotels, simply going somewhere to stay overnight when traveling is the be-all, end-all. When booking a hotel because it has all the amenities the traveler wants, it has a sense of luxury that fits into their budget. That could be because it has food and beverage, a pool, spa treatments, or is located near where they want to explore.
There’s so much more to consider when looking at loyalty to hotels and hotel brands, he said.
Millennials are the age group who are most loyal to hotel brands and car rental brands, Moriarty said. They see they have more disposable income compared to previous years, and they might have more time off and flexibility in their jobs to be able to travel for longer periods of time.
“They’re looking at different options,” he said. “They're researching different hotels. The more you travel, the more hotels and hotel brands you will experience. Naturally, your loyalty develops as a result, because you have more experience of all the different brands that are available.”
The more experiences these younger travelers have, they can make a conscious decision as they compare and contrast their experiences, he said.
“If you visited a hotel, you'll be loyal to that hotel because that hotel treated you well last time you were there,” he said. “It sounds like a very straightforward, very basic approach, but that's the essence of hospitality, isn’t it?”
One bad experience can have a detrimental effect on loyalty while a good one can be largely beneficial, he said. Eighty-five percent of people said overall satisfaction with a previous stay is more important to them. They know what they've experienced in the past, and they want to experience that again.
If a traveler had a good experience at a hotel where the food was good, the beds were comfortable, the water pressure in the shower was perfect and the staff was friendly, that’s all the more reason to go back, he said.
“Why would you potentially risk losing all of those things if you go somewhere else that you’ve never stayed before?” he asked.
Traveling abroad
The survey reports interest in international travel over the next six months reached its highest level since 2020. More travelers are now planning trips between November and April, hoping to save on cost as well as avoid crowds during the off-peak seasons.
The trend of planning trips around peak and off-peak seasons will develop further over the coming years, Moriarty said.
“Everyone travels at the same time, so why would you go where the crowd is? Why not spend the time, because the motivator for huge numbers of people is to spend time relaxing and unwinding,” he said.
Some travelers like being in busy and dynamic locations, but many are aware that if they take a trip at a slightly different time of year, they get all the benefits of the destination without the annoyances, he said. While this isn’t new information to travelers, there are more opportunities now to travel outside the traditional peak seasons.
“Destinations brands are more aware of the power of enticing people outside of peak seasons, being able to showcase their destination in a slightly different light,” he said. “If there's a destination that depends particularly on seasonal visits, they're able to showcase different positives about the destination, different benefits of traveling at different times of year.”
More people are also aware of problems with overtourism overseas, Moriarty said. They’ve seen news coverage and pictures of protests from places such as Barcelona and other European cities. While that hasn’t directly affected their decisions to travel yet as these are well-known places with plenty of flight options, he expects overtourism will factor more into decisions over the next year and beyond as people book domestic and international trips.
Flexible work arrangements
In MMGY’s survey that came out in November, the Portrait of American and Canadian International Travelers study, 89% of international business travelers said they occasionally or frequently extended their international business trips for leisure purposes. They extend their trips by 4.1 days on average.
The most influential factors for whether to extend a business trip are the available activities and cost of accommodations.
People are doing things that are important to them, Moriarty said. Flexible working models are still developing. Remote working used to be a relatively small work model, but then everyone was working remote and now there are hybrid models.
The emergence of a blended workspace offered more flexibility and was more about the individuals than the business, but now it’s flipped, he said. Companies are more demanding about how much time people are spending in their offices, which has had an impact on people working from anywhere.
For those who can work from different locations, if they can add a couple days onto a business trip and it doesn’t cost them a huge amount of money, they’ll continue to do it, he said. For some people, though, the business trip is enough and they don’t necessarily want to spend more time there.
The destination itself will have an impact on what people decide, but in general, it plays into that broader trend of flexibility, he said. People are looking for what suits them and being able to get what they need when they need it.
“For some people, that's tacking on a couple of days of leisure travel to a business trip or being able to work at a company that allows that flexibility to work from anywhere, or to be able to be more flexible when it comes to taking time off or being able to travel,” he said.