Domestic Travel Suffers Amid International Travel Boom

by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 12:00 AM ET, Fri August 4, 2023

It’s hardly any secret that international travel has been a top priority for Americans this summer. So much so, that destinations throughout Europe in particular, find themselves grappling with overtourism again and are implementing new restrictions to reign-in the crowds.

Meanwhile, United States-based tourism is beginning to cool.

Case in point? New data from Hopper, the airfare-tracking platform, shows that while international airline ticket prices are up about 10 percent over last year (and 26 percent from 2019), the cost of a domestic airfare has declined a whopping 11 percent from last year and 12 percent since 2019.

Looked at in dollars, an international ticket is currently averaging about $962, compared to domestic airfare, which is a mere $249, on average.

Hopper says we are witnessing the “normalization of prices” following what was a post-Covid travel surge.

“Pre-pandemic prices had been dropping every year, so if you exclude the pandemic, 2023 is where we would expect it to be,” a Hopper representative told TravelPulse.  

Airlines offer merely one example of the transition now taking place. Hotels offer another snapshot of the changing landscape. Data from CoStar that was recently reported by CNBC shows that during the first half of the year, room rates for hotels throughout Europe were up about about 14 percent over last year. Comparatively, rates for hotels in the United States had only increased about 6 percent year-over-year during the first half of this year.

In Paris alone, nightly room rates were up more than 22 percent during the first half of 2023 for luxury hotels. During the same time frame, luxury hotels in Orlando, Florida had increased a mere 0.2 percent.

Even some amusement parks in the United States are reporting declines in attendance this summer, according to CNBC. On a positive note however, U.S.-based theme park profits and revenues continue to increase year-over-year. 

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