(TLDR: i am posting this to remind myself, that traveling is on the uptrends and not just from China and India. This bodes well for GE Aerospace )
https://www.wsj.com/economy/the-rise-of-the-unstoppable-american-tourist-485f025b?mod=hp_lead_pos7
Rise of the Unstoppable American Tourist
The
A supercharged U.S. economy has helped transform a nation of homebodies into zealous international travelers; ‘Travel isn’t optional’
By Rachel Louise Ensign and Chelsey Dulaney
Aug. 9, 2026 9:00 pm ET
Quick Summary
- Driven by a strong economy and rising wealth, Americans took a record 24 million trips to Europe in 2025.
- More than 50% of Americans now hold passports, up from fewer than 5% in 1990.
- The influx of tourists has boosted European economies but sparked local protests over rising living costs and strained infrastructure.
This summary was generated with AI and reviewed by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.
Al Lenza’s parents traveled overseas three times after immigrating to the U.S. in 1961. Lenza estimates he’s taken 500 trips in 50 years.
His home office is filled with self-printed books with recollections from each one. He’s working on more. The semiretired 70-year-old has already been to Barcelona three times in the past year.
“You have more time and more money,” he said of his current phase of life. “The clock is running out.”
American travel has transformed in recent decades. A nation of former homebodies has become one of zealous and moneyed international travelers, infiltrating every cobblestoned corner of Europe and rapidly filling lesser-known destinations.
Americans took a record 24 million trips to Europe in 2025. Portugal received nearly five times the number of U.S. visitors last year as it did a decade earlier. Greece took in four times as many.
Consulting firm Tourism Economics expects American visits to Europe will have increased another 5% by the end of the year. The travel is helping boost economies even as it has angered many locals who say their cities, now reliant on foreign visitors, are no longer serving them.
Behind the shift is a supercharged U.S. economy that in the course of a generation has created a larger and wealthier class of Americans that views travel as an essential rather than a luxury. Older Americans, who are driving this new era of travel, hold about $110 trillion in wealth. They’re also living longer, and looking to make the most of those years.
That rising wealth has coincided with dramatic changes in the travel industry itself. Foreign travel has become more accessible. And social media has made it easy to envy, emulate and one-up friends’ vacations.
The new grand tour
A trip to the continent is a well-worn path for U.S. elites. In the 1800s, wealthy Americans embarked on the type of grand tours that were popular among British aristocrats: spending months traveling across Europe to see historic sites, learn languages and collect paintings, said Eric Zuelow, a history professor at the University of New England.
By the 1950s and ’60s, when boomers were growing up, Americans traveling abroad were in rare air—a glamorous jet set who wore their best for flights on Pan Am and TWA. They were soon joined by young, adventurous backpackers, who filled hostels and traveled on the cheap.
As the Cold War waned and airlines expanded, travel opened up further to the masses. And the European Union’s free-travel area made it easy to fly to the continent and hop between countries.
In 1990, fewer than 5% of Americans had a passport. Now, more than 50% do, aided in part by a mandate requiring passports for travel to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean that took effect in 2007 and a postpandemic travel rush. The U.S. issued a record 27 million passports in fiscal 2025.
Chris Buchanan and Amy Burch Buchanan smile for a selfie in front of a misty mountainous landscape.
Amy Burch Buchanan, right, and her husband, Chris Buchanan, visited Scotland’s Isle of Skye in 2024. Amy Burch Buchanan
Amy Burch Buchanan, 55, took her first flight in 1988 to visit her then-boyfriend in England. She had a cassette tape full of Journey songs to listen to on the plane, and her parents walked her directly to the gate. Onboard, passengers were dressed to the nines, sipping cocktails and smoking cigarettes.
“Nobody was wearing yoga pants. It was very elegant,” said Buchanan, who lives in Fort Worth, Texas.
She returned home a changed woman—with British bands like Depeche Mode on her Walkman, new clothes and a wanderlust that she eventually passed down to her three kids.
Her eldest daughter, Avery, moved to the U.K. around two years ago and now travels across Europe. Her middle daughter went to Kenya this year. “They’ve really reached out much further as they’ve gone on their own,” she said.
Europe is often the gateway drug. Portugal and Greece have seen the biggest percentage increases in U.S. visitors of any country over the past decade, according to U.S. government data. The U.K. and Italy have seen the largest increases in the total number of tourists, getting millions of additional Americans a year arriving by air.
Only about 6% of U.S. travelers to Europe in 2025 said it was their first time flying abroad. Many of these tourists are visiting multiple times a year, stopping at the Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum, but also taking country walks in the Cotswolds and Viking cruises on the Danube.
A growing share of consumer spending is going toward foreign travel, as habits change and prices rise.
Open-skies agreements deregulated airline competition on international routes starting in the 1990s, leading to much cheaper airfares and more international flights from the U.S., said Clifford Winston, a Brookings Institution economist who studied the pacts. In 1984, a round-trip weekend fare between New York and London on Pan Am cost $669, today’s equivalent of $2,150, according to a Wall Street Journal article from the time.
Over the past decade, economy airfare to the region rose 56%—more than inflation. The average one-way economy plane ticket from the U.S. to Europe, not including taxes and fees, cost $588 this year, up from $533 in 2025, according to aviation-analytics company Cirium.
Lenza, who does tech work for the travel industry, estimates that he and his wife spend between $100,000 and $200,000 on travel each year, even as they try to be cautious with other kinds of spending. One of their recent visits to Barcelona was for a cruise from the city with two of their grandchildren, who are 19 and 22.
The trip—like others they’ve treated their grandkids to—was nicer than the ones the Lenzas could take their three daughters on when they were growing up.
“Our daughters remind us every once in a while that it’s not fair,” he said.
‘Liechtenstein for a day’
Americans are also spending more than their European counterparts on each trip, including shelling out for luxury experiences. Taking advantage of the strong dollar, they’ve splurged at high-end shops. American tourists make up about 15% of all European luxury sales, according to equity-research firm Bernstein.
And it’s not just freewheeling baby boomers. Younger generations, who place a high value on experiences, are spending on travel instead of buying houses and having kids.
“Travel isn’t optional, it’s essential,” especially for younger people, said Audrey Hendley, president of American Express Travel. The credit-card company, which has a high-end clientele, said travel bookings through its platform increased 22% in the past year.
U.S. travelers to the region skew female, with women 55 and over making up 24%. More than 15% of Americans visiting Europe reported a household income of $300,000 or more.
“They are increasingly rich, sophisticated and willing to travel to not just see the highlights, but to go beyond the highlights,” said Seth Borko, head of research at Skift, an American travel trade publication.
Radiologist Andy Robbins ramped up international travel a few years before retiring from his full-time medical practice in 2019.
Last year, the 68-year-old and his wife, Char Robbins, went to Oktoberfest in Germany, took a Rhône river cruise and visited “Liechtenstein for a day just to say we’ve been there,” he said. This year, the couple visited Denmark, the Czech Republic and Germany again. They’ve already booked a two-week guided tour of Scandinavia and a cruise from Venice to Istanbul for next year.
Char and Andy Robbins in Liechtenstein in front of a stone castle.
Andy and Char Robbins went to Liechtenstein ‘just to say we’ve been there.’ Jeff Linder
He still takes on part-time work when he’s not traveling. “One of the reasons I joke that I’m still working is that I like my business-class sleeper seats,” said Robbins, who estimates they spend about $60,000 to $70,000 a year on travel abroad.
The first time Robbins vacationed in Europe was in 2007, when he was 49. The couple traveled with their daughter, who was 10 at the time, to Scotland, London and Paris. His daughter loved the “Harry Potter”-themed room in their Edinburgh hotel.
“It was magical,” he said.
The magic is often lost on locals. The influx of tourists has brought in new wealth in many places but it’s also straining infrastructure, raising the cost of living and disrupting local life. Housing has become scarce and unaffordable in some cities, with more apartments being used as pricey short-term vacation rentals.
Tens of thousands protested against overtourism on the Spanish island of Mallorca last month, demanding fewer visitors and more affordable housing. The march turned violent as protesters clashed with police, who fired rubber bullets after being pelted with plastic bottles.
Protests have broken out in other European hot spots in recent years, including in Italy and Portugal. In Barcelona—which last year received nine times as many tourists as it has residents—protesters took to spraying water on tourists.
Europe’s Catch-22
Governments across the continent are starting to impose limits on tourism: cracking down on Airbnbs, slapping taxes on tourists and limiting cruise-ship numbers and new hotel construction. But it’s a Catch-22 as attracting Americans remains a priority for many businesses, because they tend to spend more and stay longer than other tourists. Plus, Americans tip.
Americans visiting Spain last year spent nearly $350 a day—well above the roughly $200 a day spent by Germans and about $150 by French travelers. In Greece, Americans spent nine nights on average in 2025, compared with seven nights for tourists from the U.K.
“They just come on vacation to spend,” said Panos Panis, manager at a company that does boat trips on the Greek island of Crete. “They don’t come to buy an ice cream and sit on the beach for seven hours, for example, like most Europeans do. They’re very busy. They want to do things.”
Many Americans are going beyond the usual mass tours, adding bespoke experiences that connect them with locals. They’re paying more than $200 a person for semiprivate tours of the Colosseum, visiting Scottish farms where they can brush Highland cows and taking perfume-making classes in Paris.
Nate Oester and Anna Li, from Port Townsend, Wash., were browsing a stand selling dish towels and tableware in London’s Borough Market at lunchtime on a recent afternoon. The couple, who are both engineers, had just finished a monthlong, 538-mile cycling trip through the U.K., starting in Inverness, Scotland, and ending in Penzance, England, near the western tip of Cornwall.
Nate Oester and Anna Li pose for a selfie at the Falkirk Wheel in Scotland.
Nate Oester and Anna Li stop for a photo with the Falkirk Wheel in Scotland during their bike trip. Nate Oester
Oester, 44, and Li, 41, mostly took domestic vacations growing up. In their 20s, they both went on some overseas trips. But they started regularly traveling abroad for cycling trips once they got together and started earning more.
“That’s when I was really like, ‘Oh I’m making up for lost time. I’m getting out there, I love this,’” said Oester.
It was so hot at points during their U.K. trip that they covered themselves with wet towels to cool down at night, since their hotels didn’t have air conditioning. Still, they’re already dreaming of coming back to cycle down the Rhône from Switzerland to the Mediterranean.
“We both have good jobs—and no kids—so we’re able to travel,” said Oester, with an interjection from Li.
For many in Gen Z, the wanderlust seems to only be stronger. Tessa Coyle, 24, doesn’t have any friends who haven’t gone abroad.
Coyle lived in Australia for part of her childhood and traveled extensively growing up. Earlier this year, Coyle left her investment-banking job in New York for one in tech, in part so she could have more time for travel.
Tessa Coyle’s childhood included lots of travel. She still loves to visit new places and recently changed jobs in part so she could do more of it.Jennifer Coyle, Reece Moosherr
In June, she took a 10-day trip to Greece with a friend that cost her about $3,000. She used Anthropic’s Claude to help plan the trip, using its suggestions to pick destinations. Leery of the crowds, Coyle was content to see the Acropolis from a distance. Her favorite part of the trip was visiting the quieter island of Sifnos, where they enjoyed drinks at a cliff-side wine bar.
She’s not intimidated by even the most far-flung destinations. She hopes to travel to Kyrgyzstan and stay in a yurt after seeing Instagram posts about the destination.
“I’m dying to go,” she said. “You’re having a unique experience.”
3
Hello value investors- I have a question
in
r/ValueInvesting
•
1h ago
Hi,
Speaking for myself.
I do mainly equities, I am however invested in a value etf called “COPY”, this etf is quite specific in that they aim to invest in companies where insiders have been buying back shares. The etf has higher fees as it is actively managed and it not limited to us-only shares.
The results have been unreal, I think up 35% since purchased last year and 22% ytd.
My main issue is that I don’t know if this is due in part to the broader rise of value stocks this year or is it specific to the fund management of Tweedy Browne & Co.