Summer travel: budgets jump
U.S. leisure travel spending is projected to hit a record $5,704 per household in 2026, signaling strong demand even as trip costs rise and planning gets trickier. That feeds into higher prices across hotels and activities, so budgeting early or using AI planning tools is becoming the norm. (hotelnewsresource.com)
Americans now say they expect to spend $5,704 on leisure travel over the next 12 months, and they plan to take 3.87 vacations on average, according to MMGY’s new spring survey of more than 4,500 United States adults. That is a record in the survey and it landed on April 9, 2026, right before the busiest booking stretch for summer. (mmgyintel.com) This is not just rich-household splurging at the margins. MMGY found 67% of travelers expect to take a trip in the next six months, and 56% say they will spend more on travel than they did in the past two years. (mmgyintel.com) The odd part is that this is happening while the broader mood is more cautious. Deloitte said on February 5, 2026 that many Americans are trimming trip length, distance, hotel class, and in-destination activities even though more than half still planned holiday travel at the highest level since the coronavirus pandemic began. (deloitte.com) So the summer 2026 traveler looks less like someone taking one giant blowout vacation and more like someone protecting the trip itself while cutting around the edges. The vacation stays on the calendar, but the nicer room, extra night, and expensive excursion become the parts that get negotiated. (deloitte.com) (mmgyintel.com) Prices are still pushing in the other direction. The United States Travel Association’s Travel Price Index said travel prices increased in February 2026, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on April 10, 2026 that overall consumer prices were up 3.3% from a year earlier in March. (ustravel.org) (bls.gov) Hotels are not expecting a cheap summer either. CoStar and Tourism Economics projected in February 2026 that United States hotel revenue per available room would rise 0.6% this year after a weak 2025, with major events and steadier demand helping lift pricing. (costar.com) That helps explain why planning is getting more deliberate. MMGY says half of United States leisure travelers have already used artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT or Gemini to plan travel, including 76% of Generation Z adults and 68% of millennials. (mmgyintel.com) People are using those tools the way earlier travelers used a stack of browser tabs and a legal pad. One prompt can compare a beach week in Florida with four days in California, swap hotel classes, and rebuild the whole trip when a flight jumps by $200. (mmgyintel.com) The destination mix shows the same push and pull between ambition and practicality. MMGY says Hawaii, Florida, and California are the top domestic states travelers want to visit, while 36% of Americans planning leisure travel say they expect to take an overseas trip in the next six months, the strongest reading since before 2020. (mmgyintel.com) What changed since the revenge-travel years is not the desire to go somewhere. It is that summer travel now looks like a budgeting exercise first and a vacation second, with travelers locking in the trip early, price-checking every piece, and letting software do the math before they click buy. (deloitte.com) (mmgyintel.com)
