Nearly a Third of American Travelers Will Spend More on Holiday Travel This Year

According to the latest “American Express Spending & Saving Tracker” report, nearly a third of Americans planning on traveling this holiday season expect to boost their spending this year compared to last year.

The survey found that 39 percent of American consumers plan on traveling this holiday season. Of this group, 30 percent say they expect to spend more on their traveling than they did last year.

On average, travelers plan on spending $460 per person. This number rises to $500 per person among young professionals, and $560 for affluents.

Nineteen percent of travelers are traveling for Thanksgiving and 19 percent are traveling for Christmas. Meanwhile, 10 percent are planning on taking an off-peak trip before the end of 2010, and 6 percent are spending the first day of 2011 on the road.

Visiting family and friends will be the most popular reason for traveling. American Express also found that 88 percent of holiday travelers will stay within their geographical region in the U.S., making driving (74 percent) the most popular mode of travel, followed by flying (28 percent).

The survey also shows that 64 percent of travelers will see family on their trips, up from 52 percent in 2009. However, 2 percent of travelers will hit the road to avoid seeing their families.

Of the 30 percent of travelers expecting to spend more on their holiday travel plans in 2010, 23 percent are going to spend more on taking a longer trip, 20 percent will splurge more on dining out, and 20 percent will shell out more dough on activities and entertainment. Traveling with more people (19 percent), staying in better accommodations (16 percent), going to a more expensive destination (15 percent) and flying first or business class (8 percent) were also among the popular reasons for the uptick in travel spending this holiday season.

Nevertheless, consumers are sticking to their value-conscious ways, as 77 percent are still searching for ways to cut costs when possible. The most popular way to do this will be to stay with friends and/or family (50 percent), and driving instead of flying (28 percent). Traveling on off-peak dates (13 percent), using loyalty/rewards points (11 percent) and waiting for last-minute deals (8 percent) will also be popular ways to save.

One quirky finding of the survey is that 3 percent of travelers will live out their own version of “The Holiday” by swapping homes to save money. This figure dips to 1 percent among affluents, and rises to 5 percent among young professionals.

Not having money for travel was the reason that 30 percent of the non-travelers will stay put this holiday season, followed by family/friends traveling to them instead (11 percent), using that money for other things (12 percent), and avoiding the stress and craze of holiday travel (9 percent).

According to Experian Hitwise, “mapquest” was the top travel search term (4.02 percent of search clicks) for the four weeks ending Oct. 16, followed by “google maps” (1.46 percent) and “mapquest driving directions” (1.23 percent).

Sources:</strong

http://about.americanexpress.com/news/pr/2010/holiday_tracker.aspx/

http://www.hitwise.com/us/datacenter/main/dashboard-10134.html