As American travelers move into peak season, the elevated economic anxiety that defined last month’s findings has begun to ease. Recession concerns have retreated from last month’s spike, and travel spending intent remains resilient, but rising gasoline and airfare costs are emerging as the more immediate friction point heading into summer. Meanwhile, with the 2026 FIFA World Cup just weeks away, interest among American travelers is climbing and a clear profile of the World Cup traveler is taking shape — one that is digitally native, AI-fluent, and disproportionately likely to be a parent of school-aged children.
Recession Fears Recede as Financial Sentiment Holds Steady
With spring 2026 fully in swing, travel continues to hold its place as a top budget priority for American travelers despite recent economic headwinds following the start of U.S. military operations in Iran. American travelers continue to invest in travel, as evidenced by their continued elevated leisure travel budgets and strong intent for leisure travel in the year ahead.
Current financial sentiment held steady month-over-month, with 33.2 percent of American travelers reporting that their household is financially better off compared to a year ago (vs. 34.2% in March 2026), a +2.3 percentage point improvement compared to the same time in 2025. The share of travelers who feel financially worse off was relatively flat at 24.0 percent this month (-0.3pp versus March 2026 and -2.7pp versus April 2025), suggesting that financial pressures remain meaningfully lighter than they were a year ago. Forward-looking sentiment is similarly stable: the share of American travelers who expect to be better off financially in the next 12 months edged up to 44.3 percent (+0.6pp month-over-month and +2.1pp year-over-year).
Most notably, reversing the sharp spike that drove recession expectations up to 51.9 percent last month, this month’s metrics declined significantly. The share of American travelers who expect a U.S. recession in the next six months fell to 47.5 percent (-4.4pp month-over-month and -9.4pp year-over-year). These indicators suggest that the economic outlook among American travelers has improved over the past month after their initial reaction to the start of U.S. military operations in Iran.
Travel Spending Holds Strong, but Gas and Airfare Costs Emerge as Top Deterrents
Looking at how these financial signals are translating into travel spending behavior, 34.2 percent of American travelers say now is a good time to spend on travel, unchanged from last month (+0.2pp) and meaningfully higher than the same time last year (+4.1pp). More notably, travel continues to rank highly among near-term household priorities — over six in ten American travelers (62.2%) say leisure travel is a high spending priority for the next three months, up +1.3 percentage points compared to March 2026 and +1.7 points higher than a year prior.
Perhaps the clearest signal of American travelers’ continued commitment to travel is the elevated level of anticipated travel budgets. The average maximum annual leisure travel budget reached $6,429 in April, down slightly from the March peak of $6,630, but +18.7 percent higher than the $5,417 reported at the same time last year. This sustained year-over-year increase reinforces the willingness of many households to allocate meaningful resources toward travel in the coming year.
The biggest hurdle for travel in the near-term, however, is rising concern around the cost of getting there — particularly gasoline prices and airfare. While financial sentiment remains robust overall, the share of American travelers who cited high gas prices as a recent travel deterrent is trending upward rapidly, jumping from an all-time low of 12.0 percent in February 2026 to 26.4 percent this month (+14.4pp in two months and +8.5pp year-over-year). Airfare costs follow a similar trajectory, climbing to 32.4 percent in April (+4.5pp since February and +7.2pp year-over-year). As we enter the start of the summer travel season, Future Partners will continue to monitor the impact of travel prices on actual travel volume and near-term expectations for travel spending.
Recent Travel Volume Holds Strong Year-Over-Year
With travel remaining a high priority for many households, American travelers have continued to translate intent into action. Current travel volume shows a modest pullback from March across most trip types but remains meaningfully stronger than a year ago. Just over half of American travelers (52.1%) reported taking an overnight leisure trip in the past month, down slightly from the month prior (53.9%) but well above the 44.5 percent reported at the same time last year. Overnight trips to visit friends and relatives were taken by 44.5 percent of travelers (-1.5pp month-over-month, +3.0pp year-over-year). Day trips followed a similar pattern: 51.4 percent reported a leisure day trip (vs. 54.6% in March 2026 and 48.7% in April 2025), and 42.6 percent reported a day trip to visit friends and relatives (-2.7pp month-over-month and flat year-over-year). Overall engagement with travel remains noticeably stronger than a year ago heading into the peak spring and summer travel seasons, though the role of high gas prices and airfare may begin to shift that landscape in the coming months.
A Strong Outlook for Summer and Beyond
Looking out over the next 12 months, American travelers expect to take an average of 4.0 leisure trips, broadly in line with March 2026 projections (4.1 trips) and ahead of the 3.7 trips anticipated at the same time last year. Income remains the strongest differentiator in anticipated travel activity: travelers in households earning $200K or more expect to take the most trips on average (4.9), followed by those earning $100K–$199K (4.3 trips). Travelers earning $50K–$99K anticipate 3.7 trips on average, while those earning less than $50K expect approximately 3.0 trips in the coming year. Parents of school-aged children continue to outpace non-parents with an expected average of 4.2 trips.
Excitement about leisure travel held near record levels in May 2026, with a mean score of 8.2 on a 0- to 10-point scale, and more than four in ten American travelers (42.1%) gave the highest possible rating of 10. American travelers’ near-term calendars are also filling in across the late spring and summer months. The peak summer period continues to draw the strongest activity, with 36.8 percent of American travelers reporting they currently have at least one trip planned for July 2026, followed by June (34.0%), May (30.2%), and August (29.8%). Looking further out, roughly one in four travelers have plans extending into September (25.8%) and October (23.8%), while only 11.8 percent report having no leisure trips currently planned — on par with last month (11.6%) and lower than April 2025 (13.9%).
More than eight in ten American travelers expect to travel either more (23.9%) or about the same (59.5%) over the next 12 months compared with the past year, while only 16.6 percent expect to travel less (-4.2pp year-over-year). Spending expectations follow a similar pattern: 30.8 percent expect to spend more on leisure travel in the year ahead, while only 16.7 percent expect to spend less (-5.3pp year-over-year). Even amid ongoing economic uncertainty, nearly six in ten American travelers (59.3%) agree that travel is a worthwhile investment even in a recession — a +6.1-percentage-point increase compared to a year prior — suggesting that travelers’ commitment to travel as a priority remains durable, and that they would rather spend more to make sure they can take trips than forego the experience altogether.
FIFA World Cup Interest Climbs as Kickoff Approaches
With the 2026 FIFA World Cup set to kick off in just over a month, interest among American travelers in traveling for related events has been tracking steadily upward over the past two months. In this most recent wave of The State of the American Traveler, 29.1 percent of total American travelers expressed interest in taking a World Cup trip, up +5.6 percentage points from the 23.6 percent reported in February. Interest continues to skew significantly higher among Millennials (47.0%), urban residents (49.7%), parents of school-aged children (50.0%), Latino/Hispanic travelers (47.2%), and Black/African American travelers (45.9%) this month.
Among American travelers interested in taking a World Cup trip, proximity and regional factors remain key drivers of destination preferences. Those based in the U.S. West are significantly more likely to say they would visit Los Angeles (58.3%), San Francisco (31.5%), or Seattle (28.8%), and Midwest residents are more likely to report interest in a FIFA trip to Kansas City (32.4%). Likewise, New York City (47.2%) was the top destination for Northeast residents, while Miami (37.8%) and Dallas (34.4%) outperformed other host destinations among Southern residents.
When it comes to reaching these FIFA World Cup travelers, they are significantly more likely than the average American traveler to turn to social media (70.4% vs. 54.4% of total American travelers) and to have used AI to plan travel (44.8% vs. 27.6%), suggesting an audience that is regularly online and digitally engaged. This is not just a function of age — Millennials who are interested in taking a FIFA World Cup trip are even more likely than the average Millennial traveler to use both social media (81.5% vs. 74.4%) and AI tools (50.7% vs. 38.5%) for trip planning. The FIFA traveler’s appetite for AI- and social-driven planning also sits inside a broader shift across all American travelers: the share who used a digital influencer to help plan travel has climbed from 17.3 percent a year ago to 23.8 percent this month, a notable +6.5-point gain.
FIFA World Cup travelers are also more likely to have used official DMO resources in the past, so making sure your destination has an active social presence and content distributed across multiple channels to maximize AI search optimization will be crucial to capturing market share during the FIFA World Cup season. Future Partners features a FIFA World Cup 2026 Traveler specialty profile on our The State of the American Traveler Insights Explorer, with more targeted market insights for destinations looking to reach these once-in-a-lifetime travelers.
Route 66 Continues to Resonate Across Generations
Beyond FIFA, interest in Route 66 Centennial travel continues to track strongly at 46.8 percent overall — virtually unchanged from last month and notably more cross-generational than FIFA’s appeal, with interest spanning 43.8 percent of Boomers to 49.9 percent of Millennials. Parents of school-aged children remain the standout segment at 55.9 percent, and high-income travelers ($200K+) also over-index at 52.1 percent. California (34.6%), Arizona (32.6%), and Texas (28.1%) lead state-level destination interest, offering corridor states a continued runway for collaborative summer campaigns.
Looking Ahead
As summer approaches, the May findings underscore a familiar story for the travel industry: American travelers remain committed even as they navigate a new set of headwinds. Recession fears have receded, and budgets and trip intent remain elevated — but the cost of getting to a destination, both at the pump and at the gate, is climbing fast and may begin to reshape how households plan and spend in the months ahead. For destinations and brands, the opportunity remains clear: lean into value and drive-market positioning where it makes sense, capitalize on the FIFA World Cup window with a digitally engaged audience that is already searching, and continue meeting American travelers in the AI-assisted, video-driven planning channels where their decisions are now being made.
