Travel Trends Index: Travel Grows, But More Sluggishly

Travel to and within the U.S. grew three percent year-over-year in July, according to the U.S. Travel Association’s Travel Trends Index (TTI).

But the association’s economists note that growth is slowing—putting the U.S. even further behind the pace of the sustained global travel boom.

Growth of both domestic and international travel decelerated between June and July. According to the Leading Travel Index (LTI), this trend will continue for the next six months, as domestic and international travel will still register gains, but at a slower rate than in the previous six months.

“While international inbound travel is growing, it continues to underperform the earlier years of the current economic expansion,” said U.S. Travel Senior Vice President for Research David Huether.

Through January 2019, the LTI projects that international travel will grow at a rate of 1.6 percent. As the U.S. seeks to capitalize on the rapid expansion of travel that is happening worldwide, the U.S. travel growth rate is not accelerating at a fast enough pace to allow the U.S. to regain its share of the global travel market, which peaked in 2015 at 13.6 percent.

Domestic travel—buoyed by solid consumer and business spending and high consumer confidence—continues to outpace international travel’s rate of growth. Domestic business travel has been particularly strong, though rising labor costs have the potential to inhibit business investment and diminish consumer confidence.

The TTI is prepared for U.S. Travel by the research firm Oxford Economics. The TTI is based on public and private sector source data which are subject to revision by the source agency. The TTI draws from: advance search and bookings data from ADARA and nSight; airline bookings data from the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC); IATA, OAG and other tabulations of international inbound travel to the U.S.; and hotel room demand data from STR.

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