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The State of the American Traveler in December 2024—Christmas & New Year’s Travel, AI Interest Outpacing Usage

Date

Dec 10, 2024

Category

The State of the American Traveler

By

Future Partners

Child with santa hat looking outside plane window

About three-in-ten American travelers have trip plans specifically for Christmas, with GenZ showing a notable uptick in such plans over the last month. Meanwhile, more than one-in-ten have New Year’s trip plans. Looking forward, Americans are increasingly reporting they will prioritize travel in their near-term budgets, with anticipated trip budgets showing a nearly 32% increase year-over-year. When it comes to planning travel, 15% of American travelers say they have (deliberately) used an AI tool to plan a trip in the past 12months, although interest in such tools has jumped more than 6 points in the last six months to 36%. 

IMPORTANT: These findings are brought to you from our independent research, which is not sponsored, conducted, or influenced by any advertising or marketing agency. The key findings presented below represent data from over 4,000 American travelers collected in November 2024.

American Travelers’ Financial Outlook Continues to Hold Steady

  • The steady sense of financial wellness that had been reported by American travelers for more than the past year showed some signs of shakiness in this month, with the metric of those who feel that their household is better off financially relative to a year ago dropping below 30 percent for the first time since September 2023 (at 29.3%). However, optimism about their financial future remains unfazed, with nearly half (49.6%) saying they expect their household to be better off in the next year, up +1.5 points compared to last month and only -1.5 points down compared to the same time last year. Furthermore, American travelers’ expectations of an economic recession reached another low, at 34.4 percent. The belief that now is a good time to travel also remains steady, at over a third of American travelers (34.1%). Similarly, nearly six in ten (57.5%) say that leisure travel will be a high budget priority in the next three months, up +0.4 points compared to last month and a more notable +4.5 points year-over-year. Importantly, more than three in ten American travelers (31.9%) expect to spend more on travel in the next 12 months, with anticipated travel budgets coming in at $5,750, a 31.8 percent increase year-over-year.
Time series chart for America Travel Expectations

Recent Travel Rates, Holiday Season Travel Plans and What’s Ahead

  • In November, 46.1 percent of American travelers reported they took at least one overnight leisure trip, down -3.1 points compared to the previous month, but up slightly (+1.9 points) over the same time last year. Interestingly, overnight leisure travel rates continue to be higher among Gen Z (58.1%) and Millennial (51.5%) travelers compared to Boomers (40.2%). Meanwhile, leisure day trip volume was similar to the prior month at 50.4 percent, and down 1.6 points year-over-year. However, American travelers expect to take more trips in the next year, with 29.6 percent saying they anticipate traveling more for leisure, another metric that has remained relatively stable this year. This sunny travel volume outlook is driven primarily by Gen Z (40.7%) and Millennial (32.0%) travelers, though over one in four Gen X (27.7%) and Boomers (27.0%) also say they expect to take more trips in the next year.
  • Looking towards Christmas, 29.4 percent of American travelers have a trip planned for the holiday, statistically identical to last month. Interestingly, there is an uptick amongst Gen Z travelers, with 40.9 percent saying they now have a Christmas trip planned, up +8.2 points month-over-month. Christmas trips remained flat amongst Millennial travelers at 35.9 percent. Gen X (28.3%) and Baby Boomers (23.1%) remain notably less likely than younger travelers to have Christmas holiday travel plans in place.
  • Looking ahead to New Year's, 11.7 percent of American travelers surveyed currently have trips planned specifically to ring in 2025, with Millennial travelers (19.9%) leading Gen Z (14.5%), and fewer than one in ten Gen X (9.7%) or Baby Boomers (6.4%) reporting that they will travel for the New Year holiday this year.
Time series chart on Christmas trip plans

A Pulse Check on AI Usage in Travel Planning

  • This month, Future Partners checked in on the use of artificial intelligence in travel planning amongst American travelers.  Awareness of artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Microsoft Copilot has increased significantly over the last several months, with more than three-quarters of American travelers (76.4%) saying they had heard of such tools before, up +21.3 points since May. While awareness of AI tools has made notable gains across the traveling American population, adoption of these tools specifically for travel planning remains relatively slow, though this has also increased somewhat. Now 15.1 percent of American travelers say they have (deliberately) used an AI tool to plan a trip in the past 12 months, up +3.8 points compared to May 2024. Such usage was most frequently reported by Gen Z travelers (32.1%), followed by Millennial travelers (22.3%), while fewer than one in ten Baby Boomer travelers (6.6%) said they have used an AI tool for travel planning in the last year. Adoption of AI tools for travel planning is also significantly higher among high-income groups, with 21.6 percent of travelers with an income of $200K or more saying they have use AI for this, compared to just 12.9 percent of those with an income of less than $50K or 12.5 percent with an income between $50K-$90K
  • Nevertheless, interest in using AI technology for travel inspiration or trip planning also saw an increase from 29.4 percent of overall American travelers in May 2024 to 35.5 percent this month. Importantly, the majority of Gen Z travelers surveyed (57.9%) said they are interested in using AI for travel inspiration and planning, followed by nearly half of Millennials travelers (48.9%). However, fewer than a third of Gen X travelers (31.2%) and only a quarter of Baby Boomer travelers (24.3%) said the same. Notably, the perceived trustworthiness of AI-generated content has not made any gains since the spring, with a statistically identical 17.3 percent of American travelers saying they would trust travel-related content that has been labeled as generated by AI. Mirroring interest levels in using AI technology for travel inspiration or planning, the perceived trustworthiness of AI-generated content was highest by far among Gen Z travelers (35.9%), followed relatively distantly by Millennial travelers (26.1%), while fewer than one in ten Baby Boomer travelers (9.1%) said they would find such content trustworthy.
Interest in AI for Travel Inspiration by Income

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