WASHINGTON, D.C.
U.S. leisure, business and international inbound travel is expected to increase in 2013, with the leisure segment set to have a record year in 2012, according to the U.S. Travel Association.
“The U.S. Travel Association forecasts the number of person trips taken in the U.S. will rise in 2012 by 36 million, to reach 2.04 billion, a 1.8 percent increase over 2011,” said David Huether, senior vice president of research and economics for the U.S. Travel Association. “More importantly, the number of trips taken in 2012 will be an all-time high, 1.5 percent above the prior record in 2007.”
While not increasing at the record clip of 2012, domestic travel in 2013 is expected to increase a little over 1 percent, with total domestic travel spending, including leisure and business travel, forecast to increase 3 percent.
“For 2013, the number of trips taken by Americans will continue to increase to a new record high, but the growth we expect next year will be at a slower pace than the past few years,” he said, adding that the rate of growth should be about 1.1 percent. “That’s a deceleration from 2012’s 1.8 percent increase, but that’s still an additional 23 million trips.
“The 1.1 percent growth we expect next year is actually faster than from 2003-2007, which is the last time there was a sustained upturn in trips, before the Great Recession,” he added.
Travel spending is expected to grow 4.7 percent in 2012, to $852 billion, and is forecast to rise 3.6 percent in 2013.
Domestic business trips in 2012 are expected to increase by approximately 1.3 percent, a slower growth rate that Huether attributed to a low level of consumer confidence and a slowdown in business activity earlier in the year.
Huether said 2012 will represent the third consecutive annual increase in business trips, however, which is something that didn’t happen for three consecutive years even in the boom times of the 2000s.
“Businesses continue to have a heightened focus on the value and bottom-line benefits of travel,” Huether said. “We feel the slight increase in business travel next year continues to reflect demand for face-to-face meetings that drive growth and productivity.”
International inbound travel is expected to increase 4 percent in 2013, and spending is forecast to increase 7.1 percent, according to the U.S. Travel Association, and will now account for 15.1 percent of total travel spending in the U.S., up from 14.3 percent in 2011.
In terms of job creation, the association said the increases will allow the U.S. travel industry to add 98,800 jobs by the end of 2013, to total approximately 7.6 million jobs.
A major wildcard facing U.S. business is the so-called debt-relief “fiscal cliff” that could be triggered by the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and payroll tax cut, along with the first part of $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts in defense spending agreed to last summer by Congress.
The economic uncertainty has already rippled through the business world, causing corporations to hold back spending entering into the new year.
“I think that this uncertainty is probably having some impact on travel planning right now, and we could possibly see some sort of slowdown take place maybe in the beginning of next year,” Huether said. “But we hope that this uncertainty will be mitigated next year and we’ll see an upturn in activity going forward.
“You hear all the time that Congress doesn’t want to act until it really has to,” he added, “so I think when they have their feet put to fire there’s an $800 billion gorilla that has to be tackled in December, and reasonable powers will work out a situation to divert a slowdown.”
