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One of the most important travel recovery stories since the end of the pandemic is the astonishing increase in American international travel over the past two years.
As Americans set off to travel for the Thanksgiving Day holiday, this latest edition of the Traveller Insights Series, produced exclusively for DFNI by travel retail data experts Air4casts, focuses on the meteoric rise in American travellers.
The series aims to provide fresh insights into the characteristics of each of the major travelling nationalities. All data comes from the Air4casts Travel Retail data suite.
The Greatest of the Post-Covid Success Stories
One of the most important travel recovery stories since the end of the pandemic is the astonishing increase in American international travel over the past two years.
In October alone almost 25% more Americans boarded an international flight out of the USA than was the case in 2019. Globally the comparison for all the travelling nationalities is around 2% points. This makes the American presence in a wide range of destinations much more pronounced than it was five years ago.
The Top October American Destinations
While Mexico's traditional sunspots, especially Cancun, continued to top the getaway list in October it was the Dominican Republic that showed the most dramatic growth.
Americans heading to the Dominican Republic propelled the country into the fourth most popular American destination with an astonishing 75% uplift over the same period in 2019. Five years ago, it barely scraped into the top ten.
The second seismic shift in American travel last month was another meteoric rise, this time in travel by US citizens to Japan. Japan was the fifth most visited country by Americans taking direct flights in October with a two-thirds increase compared to October 2019. The dollar's strength against the yen is making travel to Japan a particularly attractive proposition.
These big movements came at the expense of France and Germany, both now pushed out of the top five direct flight destinations for US passport holders.
The UK is a perennial favourite for American tourists while second placed Canada showed a marginal decline. Conversely travel by Americans to China dropped sharply last month, the lack of direct flights between the two countries just one of the determining factors.
Avolta Reaches Most American Travellers
During their global international travels this Thanksgiving Americans are most likely to encounter an airside shop operated by Avolta.
Taking each retailer's airside presence both at the US departure airports and at the airports Americans will use on their return journey puts Avolta comfortably ahead of Duty Free Americas for sheer American citizen reach.
The reason for this is the combination of Avolta's airside presence at departure terminals in the USA with their strong presence across Europe for the return journey.
Within the top ten retailers for potential American passenger reach are three other European headquartered retailers, each of which is there because of their unique combination of airside stores at terminals handling large numbers of US citizens heading back to the USA.
Flying on US Owned Airlines a Definite Preference
Most US passport holders travelling internationally use American owned airlines. In October 60% of them chose to fly abroad on an American airline with the outlook for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday even higher at 65%.
There are significant differences across the regions. Over 90% of Americans booked to fly to the Dominican Republic this month will travel there on a US owned airline while those heading for Mexico will hit the 80% mark.
On trips to the Middle East however the majority will use one of the big Middle East carriers like Emirates or Qatar Airways. There is a similar picture for those travelling to Asia.
