Given the ready availability of cheap travel options, such as cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, and cheap vacation packages, it is surprising that more Americans do not travel abroad. Surprisingly, only 30 percent of the more than 308 million U.S. citizens have passports.
U.S. tourists took almost 62 million trips outside the United States in 2009, which was a three percent decline from the prior year. Mexico and Canada were the destinations of almost half of these trips.
The percent of Americans with passports was in the teens a couple of years ago and rose in response to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative which requires American and Canadian citizens to present documents showing citizenship prior to entering the U.S.
The percent of Americans with passports remains very low compared to Canadas 60 percent and the United Kingdoms 75 percent.
Americans lack of interest in international travel is attributed to the following:
People in the United States often dont feel the need to travel outside of the country because of the cultural and geographical diversity in the U.S. There are literally thousands of domestic destinations competing to lure visitors to sandy beaches, great skiing, desert sun, and a vast array of cultural offerings.
Americans tend to be skeptical about visiting other countries because they are usually unfamiliar with them. Generalizations abound about foreign destinations being dirty, having poor hospitals, and tourists who get sick, raped or robbed. Often the only news Americans read about foreign countries concerns natural disasters or other bad news.
Americans work mentality makes it harder to take an extended vacation to visit overseas. Americans do not tend to emphasize leisure time, prioritizing earning more money instead. Americans tend not to use all vacation time that is earned and tend to take shorter, more frequent domestic trips. Workers in Europe average between six to eight weeks of vacation vs. Americans who average less than 17 paid vacation days.
The shortest flight from the east coast of America to Europe is around six hours which discourages potential tourists who do not want to be stuck in a plane for that amount of time. Americans tend to travel within the U.S. whereas natives of Europe or South Asia have much easier access to other countries.
There is a mistaken perception that traveling overseas is always expensive. Depending on where in Europe someone chooses to visit, taking a vacation and flying from the east coast of the U.S. to the west coast is not necessarily much cheaper than vacationing in Europe. www.cheapfares.com