Lacey Pfalz
TravelPulse (TNS)
Americans left the country more this spring than they did before the pandemic, according to new passenger volume data released by The National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO).
The new data focused on the month of April and found that more than 8 million Americans left in April to travel internationally, an 8% increase from April 2023 and 106.3% higher than in April of 2019, prior to the pandemic.
Of the departures made in April, 38.5% left for Mexico, while 20.2% left for Europe. Canada is receiving an increase in popularity, with a 12.9% growth in visitation from Americans from April 2023.
Travel observers have seen an increased desire for international travel among Americans since the pandemic ended, and confidence once again grew for travel as a whole, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
The NTTO reports a strong statistic supporting that confidence: April was the 37th consecutive month that the total number of Americans traveling internationally grew on a year-over-year basis. This might indicate that the international travel trend is only growing the farther removed we are from the pandemic era.
NTTO data from March 2024 found much the same, with a 20% increase in Americans traveling internationally compared with March 2019. The data also reported a growth in Americans heading to Europe, especially.
It’s not just an American trend, either. April data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) found that international air travel demand grew nearly 16% globally year over year.
Travelers heading to America from other countries increased 5.2% in April compared to the year prior, for a total of 5.88 million travelers. Yet that’s still 83.6% of the pre-pandemic number, which indicates that while other countries are seeing international visitor growth the likes of which exceed their prepandemic average, America is still far behind.
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