February 4, 2011 Why Americans don't travel abroad.
CNN.com has an interesting article on why Americans don’t travel abroad.
While most people here are travelers and this article doesn’t represent them, do you think the conclusions are correct? (No need to argue that YOU do differently. Let’s discuss why others don’t leave he comfort of North America).
(Frank II)
Why more Americans don’t travel abroad
(CNN) — The numbers tell the story: Of the 308 million-plus citizens in the United States, 30% have passports.
That’s just too low for such an affluent country, said Bruce Bommarito, executive vice president and chief operating officer for the U.S. Travel Association.
“Americans are comfortable in their own environment,” Bommarito said.
There were 61.5 million trips outside the United States in 2009, down 3% from 2008, according to the Office of Travel and Tourism Industries. About 50% of those trips were to either Mexico or Canada, destinations that didn’t require a passport until 2007.
The percentage of Americans with passports — a number that was in the teens just a few years ago — has spiked since the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was adopted. It requires American and Canadian travelers to present documents showing citizenship when entering the United States.
Despite the climbing number of American passports in circulation, 30% is still low compared to Canada’s 60% and the United Kingdom’s 75%.
“Not taking the leap is comforting, because this is the American life,” said Matthew Kepnes, international traveler and creator of NomadicMatt.com, a blog chronicling his travels and observations. “Breaking outside anything that is your norm is scary.”
Tourism experts and avid travelers attribute Americans’ lack of interest in international travel to a few key factors, including: the United States’ own rich cultural and geographic diversity, an American skepticism and/or ignorance about international destinations, a work culture that prevents Americans from taking long vacations abroad and the prohibitive cost and logistics of going overseas.
Cultural and geographical diversity
America has it all: “From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam,” as “God Bless America” proclaims. Beautiful beaches in Florida, crisp skiing in Colorado and the desert sun in Arizona are among thousands of domestic destinations competing to lure visitors.
“In the United States, we have an enormous amount of places we can travel — basically an entire continent,” said everything-everywhere.com author Gary Arndt, who has been traveling abroad and blogging since 2007. “You can do all kinds of things without needing a passport.”
Arndt, who was in Los Angeles when interviewed by CNN, noted that he could go to any number of different ethnic enclaves within the city and get a taste of culture without spending much money or time. The same goes for many other parts of the country.
“There are pockets of regional culture — the South has an attitude that New Yorker’s don’t have,” Kepnes said. “But you don’t have the cultural differences that you would get if you went to Asia, Paris or London.”
Even with Chinatown in Los Angeles and Little Italy in New York City, it’s just not the same as walking the streets of Beijing or riding a gondola in Venice.
“America is an outstanding country and an outstanding vacation destination — no doubt about that,” said Joe Byrne, executive vice president for Tourism Ireland. “But it is America. I’m sure you have great Irish traditional music in an American Irish pub, but you don’t have the Lakes of Killarney.”
Skepticism and ignorance
We buy goods from Sri Lanka and outsource business to India, but when it comes to traveling to these destinations, Americans would rather stick close to home.
“Our culture doesn’t emphasize knowledge of the world,” Kepnes said. “We’re more skeptical of it because we just don’t know about it.”
Kepnes attributes some of our skepticism to negative media reports about the world. For example, he said that Nicaragua always draws negative connotations because of the political and civil unrest that has been covered in the news.
“When I first left I was very nervous and scared,”Kepnes said of traveling to countries like Nicaragua. “What if I’m mugged in Thailand or kidnapped in a hostel?”
Arndt has encountered similar feelings when he travels to lesser-known destinations. Though he is comfortable in his travels, others aren’t so convinced.
“Every time I say I’m going somewhere, people assume that it’s dirty, they don’t have good hospitals, you’re going to get sick or raped or robbed,” Arndt said. “If you know something about Colombia, it’s drug lords, which hasn’t been a problem for 20 years, but that’s still what people think of.”
Arndt pointed out that foreign countries generally don’t make it into the media for doing good things, just for natural disasters or bad news.
“I think there’s a lot of fears that people have that may be used to justify the fact that they don’t go somewhere,” he said.
Work culture
Many Americans follow the same pattern: work hard in high school, go to college, accrue a load of debt and get a job right away to work it off, Arndt said. The United States doesn’t promote taking a year off between major life phases like New Zealand or the United Kingdom.
“Up until recently, having a gap year was a job killer, so you chose work,” Kepnes said. “And that work, work, work mentality makes it much harder to leave.”
A one-year break in your resume could make an American employer question your commitment to a company, whereas not taking a gap year in New Zealand would be considered crazy, Kepnes said.
“We’re not a travel culture,” he said. “Countries are travel cultures when they put more of an emphasis on leisure time, and Americans tend to choose money over leisure time.”
Even those who do receive a nice chunk of vacation time don’t use it all, and those who do seem to take shorter, more frequent trips, Arndt said.
“There are some differences in terms of vacation time that are hugely influential,” Byrne said. Workers in mainland Europe receive between six and eight weeks of vacation, while Americans average about 16.6 paid vacation days as of 2005, according to the Families and Work Institute. Thirty-six percent of those surveyed didn’t plan to use their full vacation.
“It’s not just about how much vacation time people get,” Arndt said. “Americans don’t even use all the vacation time that they have.”
Cost and logistics
When trying to entice Americans to visit Ireland, Byrne said the first thing he does is remind people that it’s more affordable than they think.
“That’s generally true of vacations to Europe,” Byrne said. “The exchange rate is more favorable for Americans than it has been in recent years.”
The 30.3 million Americans who traveled overseas for vacation in 2009 spent an average of $2,708 each — including airfare, lodging and other expenditures, according to the Office of Travel and Tourism Industries. It seems that getting there is about half the battle: Average airfare per person was $1,177.
Also, as Kepnes pointed out, time is money for some Americans.
“It’s an easier hop if you’re in Paris or Madrid, or any other European city,” Byrne said. “Whereas the flights from the East Coast of the United States take up to six hours.”
The United States is so big that a flight from one state to another could take just as much time as a flight to Europe. At any rate, Americans are more likely to do the former.
“We’re a big country, and we have a culture of traveling within the United States,” Bommarito said. “When you’re born and raised in a European or South Asian country, your access to other countries is much easier.”
Arndt doesn’t see this changing any time soon, if at all.
“Cultural shifts like that are not something that happens quickly,” he said. A swing toward international travel is going to take time.
Still, Kepnes said he believes that more Americans going abroad will become inevitable sooner or later.
“Americans are going to have to speak more languages and be more culturally savvy,” Kepnes said. “We have to change because we have to do business with all these other cultures.”
That’s music to Bommarito’s ears. After being nervous the first time he landed in China, he said he now feels just as comfortable on the streets of Beijing as he does anywhere in the United States.
“One of the true benefits of travel to foreign countries is it’s probably the greatest form of diplomacy,” Bommarito said. “Strange ideas go away and you realize that we’re all similar, just with different cultures.”
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Reader Comments (18)
Exactly. The price quoted here for both of us to go to Ireland is just over 25 percent of my student loans.
From all the people in various countries that I chat with, I've found the Americans have the least amount of vacation to play with and generally search for budget / discounted fares and lodgings for the one or two weeks they're allowed for vacation......very few of them are rich enough to splurge money on luxury travel and even fewer can afford to travel every year.
The British receive an amazing amount of vacation and combined with a generous choice of transport and budget fares to reach mainland Europe, they always seem to be toddling off, fairly often, somewhere for a break....my family and friends are proof of that lifestyle and all of them receive five or six weeks holidays per year.
I have heard different reasons for not wanting to travel / happy at home / can't afford it / the world isn't safe / nervous about travelling to foreign places / non English speaking places, fear of flying was a biggy.
In this recent economy I'm surprised anyone is travelling from the States BUT, you will always find people who desire to travel and prefer to save their money for that than spend it on a home lifestyle. My mother was a great example of that urge to travel. Every year dad asked her to choose between a great holiday abroad or their need for a washing machine / dryer. The holiday always won.
What wasn't very well represented was the sheer size of the country. In fact it takes at least 6:30 of uninterrupted flight time to get from say Boston to Paris, i.e. from two rather close points on the edge of the respective continents. You'd have to travel from Hawaii to NYC to cover that. Or Anchorage to El Paso. So size is not all. Yes, it's big but it's not THAT big. The problem is that it is insular. There are two huge oceans and two other big countries. So the US only has two neighbors. And it's not easy to even get to know more than that. One of the neighbors is on top of it culturally quite similar and in terms of landscape and such, too. So they are living on a huge beautiful island in relative comfort. Going anywhere else is difficult and scary. Difficult because it's far and scary because they don't know anything else. So they don't even know if they would find it interesting. Thus the risk is great. High cost, uncertain outcome. So I don't know if the situation will ever change. And after what has happened under Bush Americans aren't exactly super welcome or at least looked down on, unfortunately.
The fear of crime is quite ridiculous, though. Of the "civilized" world the US have basically the highest violent crime rate. It's much more likely to get shot by a nut or even mugged in the US than anywhere in Europe, Canada or Australia. I don't know the crime statistics for Asia but suppose they are better, too. Obviously, Africa and Latin America can still be dangerous. Even Russia.
So the fact that they don't know these things is connected to the general culture and education. Terrible news, which most people get from TV and lackluster high-school education with particular weaknesses in history, geography and languages. What can one expect? Certainly not a people of explorers.
If one even wanted to change the insular nature, one would have to start in school.
Coming back to size. While it is not surprising that Americans don't do much international travel, there is not much merit in Europeans doing it more. We are almost forced to do so.If I want to go from Germany to Spain, it's hardly two hours by plane. By car I'd have to cross France. Those are three countries with completely different languages and cultures. You can't even do that anywhere on the North American continent. If you go from Canada to Mexico, the differences won't be as significant. IN Europe they grow up with those differences. They're thrown into it, whether they want it or not. It's not insular and there is much more diversity on much smaller surface. Well, about 500M people on a surface that is just a bit bigger than that of the US but divided into a good 25 countries with easily 18-20 languages, cultures and histories.
So for us, to travel internationally is almost a must. We can't avoid it. The question should be how many Europeans travel intercontinentally. That will be much less. Perhaps even less than in America. Why? Why would we? All the diversity is right there, easy to reach. There is perhaps a little less landscape diversity but much more cultural diversity. Sure, among my traveling, high-placed (for lack of a better word) friends, quite a few have been to more than 20 countries and at least three or four continents. But for your ordinary European going to America is just as much a dream as for the ordinary American going to Europe.
Of those 30 million trips, the lion's share are taken by the same small group of business or government types who travel frequently/repeatedly on business. The percentage of Americans actually traveling as leisure tourists is tinier still.
It's the economy, and the disadvantage of geography. A European can hop a train or a cheap RyanAir flight easily; an American who doesn't happen to live in one of the dwindling handful of consolidated airline hub cities has a long and pricey gauntlet of hub-and-spoke connector flights on tiny puddle-jumper aircraft just to get to an international departure airport.
And to be fair, there's a lot to see in the thousands of miles of America itself, and nothing provincial about savoring the attractions of your own country.
One thing I find somewhat non-conforming to the idea that Americans don't travel enough is that the more touristy parts of Europe, particularly during the summer, seems to have been transformed into something like an American theme park, with ann abundance of English speaking restaurants and hotels. I'm not sure there is a restaurant in Venice that doesn't have English speaking wait staff.
In regards to hotels, if you stick to major name chains found in the U.S., you will pay for it. And, you'll get a similar room to what you find in the U.S. However, using sites like TripAdvisor, you can find smaller, locally owned hotels which offer great service and clean rooms. BTW, the "star system" is different in Europe. In the U.S., it's about quality. In Europe, it pertains to the amenities the hotel offers. It has nothing to do with quality.
As to restaurants, TripAdvisor plus other boards are a great place to get recommendations for places to eat. You can also ask at your hotel for places the locals go to. If you pass a restaurant that has an English language menu in the window, or has the words, "We Speak English" plastered somewhere, it's catering to tourists and best to stay away. Many major cities, and not just in Europe, have a plethora of "tourist" restaurants that are total rip offs. (One hint, if they are within a block of a major tourist site, and they have signs in the window as above, run away.)
I find the best restaurants, and the ones that don't bankrupt me, are smaller, family owned places where most of the people eating are locals. These are not the fanciest of places but they offer great food at reasonable prices. (And I do the same when visiting cities in the U.S.--find out where the locals eat,) I always ask at my hotel: "If you had a friend from out of town visiting, and you wanted to go for a nice, yet affordable meal near here, where would YOU go."
As to why there are so many English speakers is simple. English is now the official "second language." Most people in Europe who cater to any type of tourist will speak it. Let's say a Danish couple is visiting Venice. More than likely the Danes won't speak Italian nor will the Italians speak Danish. But chances are, they will both speak a little English.
Never compare anyplace overseas to home. If you want it to be like home, stay home. Rome, Paris, Tokyo, Bangkok are not supposed to be like the U.S. They are supposed to be like they are.
To have an affordable overseas vacation takes some work prior to leaving. It takes some planning and learning about the local customs. By doing that, I can't promise you wont' have a bad meal or be taken, but the chances of it happening will be much lowered.
The adoption of the Euro made a huge difference in 'inexpensive' European travel, as the countries with previously cheap currencies (Spain, Portugal, Italy etc) experienced an abrupt ratcheting-up of prices...from the bottom up...which hurt locals on fixed or modest incomes severely, and plays a little-discussed role in their continuing economic troubles.
There are still bargains to be found, but on the whole it's true that EU leisure and budget travel is noticeably more expensive for Americans now than before the Euro. The American middle class is in deepening decline, and vacations are an obvious 'spend' to slash.
I use TripAdvisor to help prevent unnecessary overspending (and you can save still more by using TA to locate the hotel you want, then book cheaper directly through the hotel's website bypassing TA's commission, but that's a seperate post), but HighRoller correctly points out that for many Americans in this economy Europe's charms do not appear affordable compared to budget US travel...not to mention those 'staycation' s which are an increasingly common indicator of our declining standard of living for what was recently considered the middle class.
I just checked a very nice hotel in Rome, Grand Hotel De la Minerva. A 5 Star Deluxe Property. To be fair I picked a Sat/Sun stay the first weekend of July. High Season if there ever was one. Cost per night is 374 Euros. That's today $510. You will actually get a Junior Suite at that price. The standard room which I find quite lovely costs $325 for the same night. And that's the standard rate, no package deal, nothing.
Here is a link: http://www.grandhoteldelaminerve.com/
I don't know about you, but I find that seriously better than medium quality. And it's about half of what you said. I'd actually challenge you to find a comparable hotel at a comparable price in a comparable place in the US. Hmmmm? Is there a place comparable to Rome? Probably not. That's why we go there!
A $100 Pizza dinner in Rome? Certainly possible. You just got ripped off. There are two parties involved in such rip-offs, both are guilty. Especially when most restaurants have prices and menus outside with FINAL prices for all to see. There may be a fixed charge called coperto in Italy. But it's in the 5 Euro or less range. Whereas in the USA when you go to any restaurant there will be about 8% in VAT (sales tax) and an expected 15-20% in tip. Those things are not included in the prices. They are not spelled out for you. You have to calculate that yourself. If you can do that before eating out, you should be able to also just sum up final prices and not be surprised.
And frankly, eating a Pizza in Rome (or rather Naples) is probably preferable (and thus worth more) to eating any pizza anywhere in Florida IF one cares about the quality of the pizza and authenticity.
The only other pizza in my life outside of Italy that was comparable to a pizza in Italy was in Paris. The pizzaiolo and owner of the place was from Naples (Italy not Florida). Cost is right around 14 Euro. My Italian friends there agreed with my assessment and we had affordable dinners there even as students (back then it was 8 Euros). The name is, of course, Vesuvio. It's two steps from the Place St. Germain, one of the most expensive places in Paris, where you pay $10 for a cup of coffee.
You must also not forget that rents are much higher generally in Europe (a side effect of having about twice the population density as in the US in most tourist places). And that people working in the tourism industry actually make almost fair wages, have real contracts, health insurance, retirement benefits and so on. Many if not most of them also have a formal hotel or gastronomy education of three years (there are schools for that) and not just on the job training. You'd have to go to a place like the French Laundry (run by a European) in the US to have similar conditions.
That said, as a member of the IWFS, I have tried my fair share of restaurants all over the world. If you want really good quality, you got to pay. Prices vary maybe by 20%. And in any country you can get ripped off. I remember eating a pizza at Mangia's. What a nightmare! I paid perhaps $12. They should have paid me much more to eat that stuff.
Could you have been thinking of Wolfgang Puck? He is Austrian--although I wouldn't put him in the same category as Thomas Keller..
You would be hard pressed to find a city anywhere in the world that didnt have a decent number of Australians or New Zealanders or even South Africans backpacking and travelling on budget.
From what I hear from peeps living in NZ and Oz, it's pretty much a world in and of itself. Very much disconnected from the rest. I've never been. Would love to go. :)