Jamie Biesiada
Are your clients traveling this summer? Now's the time to get in touch to get those last-minute trips on the books, because consumers seem more than willing to hit the road.
According to Allianz Partners USA, Americans are planning on spending even more on vacations this summer than they did last summer -- and last summer was one for the record books.
Via its annual Vacation Confidence Index, Allianz found that Americans plan to spend more than $221.6 billion on travel this summer.
That marks a 3.5% increase over last summer and a 118% increase from the prepandemic summer of travel in 2019.
Allianz defines a vacation as a leisure trip of at least a week to someplace 100 miles or more from home.
Summer travel spending's upward trend
Allianz has been tracking summer vacation spend since 2010, when Americans planned to spend $76 billion on travel. That number was on a mostly upward trajectory, with a few dips, through 2019, when Americans planned to spend $101.7 billion on summer travel.
Things took a turn in 2020, when summer travel amounted to $59.3 billion, but rose sharply in 2021 to $153.7 billion. It has been on the rise ever since.
This year, the average household plans to spend $2,843 on summer vacation, up slightly from last year's figure of $2,830. When Allianz first started tracking summer vacation spend in 2010, that figure stood at $1,653; in 2019, it surpassed $2,000 for the first time, hitting $2,037.
Allianz said that this year, 61% of Americans are planning to travel; that compares with 42% in 2019.
To compile the Vacation Confidence Index, Allianz works with Ipsos, which interviewed 2,010 Americans in April. Results were weighted to reflect the makeup of the U.S. population based on Census Bureau data.