American Express Launches 2021 Global Travel Trends Report
9.3.2021 14:00:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
American Express (NYSE: AXP) released the American Express Travel: Global Travel Trends Report today, which provides unique insight into consumer sentiment toward travel nearly one year after the COVID-19 pandemic began. The findings in the report, grounded in survey research across seven countries, including the United States, Australia, India, Canada, Mexico, Japan and the United Kingdom1, demonstrates that consumers are looking forward to traveling again and that they are planning for future trips.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210309005322/en/
American Express Travel: Global Travel Trends Report Finds Consumers are Looking Forward to Traveling Again (Graphic: Business Wire)
Top insights include:
- Strong Pent-Up Demand for Travel: 87% of people surveyed said that having a trip planned in the future gives them something to look forward to, 76% of respondents are creating their destination wish list for future travel even though they might not be able to travel yet and 63% of respondents said that they are saving their credit card points so they can go on a vacation once they feel comfortable traveling.
- Ready to Book Now: 56% of respondents said that they miss traveling so much that they are willing to book a trip now even if they might have to cancel it in the future.
- Rise of The Digital Nomad: 54% of respondents said that the freedom and flexibility of being able to live and work while traveling the globe is more appealing now than it was prior to the pandemic.
- Safety is a Priority: 65% of respondents said they plan to travel after they and their family members have received a vaccine for COVID-19.
- Privacy is the New Ultimate Luxury: 75% of respondents agree that the experiences that offer ultimate privacy is becoming a key sought-after feature of luxury travel.
- Increase in Sustainable Travel: 68% of respondents agree they are trying to be more aware of sustainability-friendly travel brands to support.
“Our latest global trends report shows that there is a pent-up demand for travel among consumers, with many people longing for and beginning to plan future trips,” said Audrey Hendley, President of American Express Travel. “In addition, the pandemic environment is giving rise to emerging trends, such as the increasing appeal of working from anywhere while traveling globally, luxury being defined as more personalized experiences, cleanliness and privacy as the ultimate luxury amenities, as well as a growing interest in the environmental and social purpose of their trips and travel companies.”
Here’s a look at key findings from the report:
CONSUMERS ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO TRAVELING AGAIN
People are finding hope and comfort in thinking about and even planning future trips.
- Travel to Uplift Health & Wellness: 78% of respondents indicate wanting to travel in 2021 to relieve the stresses from 2020.
- Planning and Paying for Future Travel: One in three say they will more frequently use travel credits or points to pay for all or part of a trip in 2021 than they did prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Making Up for Missed Travel: 61% of survey respondents plan to spend more than they normally would on a trip in 2021 since they could not travel in 2020.
- Consumers Willing to Make Sacrifices to Travel: 64% of respondents miss traveling so much that they would be willing to give up social media for a month to be able to go on vacation.
- Culinary Tourism is Here to Stay: 62% of respondents say that eating is the top activity they are interested in doing while traveling, and American Express Travel booking data for January 2021 shows foodie centric cities as top destinations for U.S. and International Card Members. Miami, San Francisco, Chicago and Houston are hot spots for U.S. American Express Card Members2 whereas Mexico City, Singapore and Tokyo are topping the list for International American Express Card Members3.
THE NEW TRAVEL MINDSET
With regular changes to booking policies, travel offers, and new destinations to consider, there is a new travel mindset today.
- Luxury Travel: The pandemic has changed peoples’ perception of luxury travel with personalized experiences (82%), high cleanliness standards (81%) and privacy (79%) being the most desirable luxury amenities among respondents1. 59% indicate that they want to use a travel agent to help plan and customize their next trip and 80% indicate they are willing to travel to destinations during the offseason so that it's less crowded.
- Surge in ‘Second-City’ Destinations: 69% of respondents are interested in visiting lesser-known destinations and American Express Travel booking data reinforces this trend, showing a rise in reservations for second-city destinations. For example, Dallas and Charlotte saw a higher share of bookings from International Card Members in January 2021 than the previous year4 and American Express Travel consultants are seeing requests for smaller cities like Porto (instead of Lisbon) in Portugal, and Wellington (instead of Auckland) in New Zealand.
TRAVELING WITH PURPOSE
Consumers are becoming more conscious travelers, are more aware of travel companies aligned with their values and will journey to destinations where they can have a positive impact on communities.
- Backing Local Communities: 72% of respondents agree that they are passionate about traveling to destinations to help boost tourism revenue and the local economy1.
- Supporting Travel Brands that Prioritize Diversity & Inclusion: 69% of respondents agree that they want to choose an airline/hotel that values diversity and inclusion, and whose employees reflect a diverse customer base.
- Carbon Conscious Travelers: 60% of respondents agree they want to book airlines that have a carbon neutral commitment.
American Express Travel’s 4,500 travel consultants provide customers with world-class service, where high-tech meets high-touch support, 24/7. To give customers more value and confidence whenever they’re ready to travel, the company has rolled out a number of discounts and offers across hotel, air and car rentals and extended American Express Travel cancellation fee waivers through the end of September. To find out more visit AmexTravel.com.
For additional findings and more information on the American Express Travel: Global Travel Trends Report, visit here.
AMERICAN EXPRESS TRAVEL: GLOBAL TRAVEL TRENDS REPORT METHODOLOGY
1 This Amex Trendex online poll was conducted by Morning Consult between January 15-24, 2021 among a national sample of 1,000 travelers in Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Mexico and the U.K., and 2,000 in the U.S. $70k+ USD household income (HHI) equivalent in Australia, Canada, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S., $50k+ USD equivalent HHI in Mexico, and $20k+ USD equivalent household income in India. Travelers defined as adults who traveled by air at least once in 2019. Results have a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points in the U.S.; plus or minus 3 percentage points in the other countries.
2 Based on U.S. Card Member flight and hotel bookings made through American Express Travel in January 2021
3 Based on International Card Member flight and hotel bookings made through American Express Travel in January 2021
4 Based on International Card Member hotel and air bookings made through American Express Travel in January 2021 compared to January 2020.
ABOUT AMERICAN EXPRESS
American Express is a globally integrated payments company, providing customers with access to products, insights and experiences that enrich lives and build business success. Learn more at americanexpress.com and connect with us on facebook.com/americanexpress, instagram.com/americanexpress, linkedin.com/company/american-express, twitter.com/americanexpress, and youtube.com/americanexpress.
Key links to products, services and corporate responsibility information: charge and credit cards, business credit cards, travel services, gift cards, prepaid cards, merchant services, Accertify, InAuth, corporate card, business travel, and corporate responsibility.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210309005322/en/
Contact information
AMERICAN EXPRESS
Heather Norton
Heather.A.Norton@aexp.com
Ali Pearce
Ali.Pearce@aexp.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Icon Solutions Showcases How Banks Can Accelerate Digital Asset Innovation with IPF9.6.2026 12:30:00 EEST | Press release
Icon Solutions – the UK fintech enabling banks to design and implement state-of-the-art payment systems – has released a reference implementation showing how banks can use the Icon Payments Framework (IPF) to accelerate support for payments processing using distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based digital assets. As IPF is agnostic to both the type of digital asset and the DLT network on which they are issued, the risk of fragmentation is reduced as adoption scales. There is growing momentum for digital assets such as stablecoins, tokenised deposits, deposit tokens and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) to enable faster, cheaper and smarter payments. Yet the emergence of different digital asset types and DLT networks – which must also work with existing financial infrastructure – creates fragmentation and operational complexity for banks. This is compounded by legacy vendor solutions that limit choice and lock banks in, making it slow, costly and risky to make the changes require
monday.com Appoints Ben Barnett General Manager of EMEA to Drive Next Phase of Regional Growth9.6.2026 11:00:00 EEST | Press release
monday.com (Nasdaq: MNDY), the AI work platform that turns strategy into execution at scale, today announced Ben Barnett’s appointment to General Manager (GM) of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, marking a major milestone in the company’s global expansion. Ben, who has been with monday.com for five years, brings a decade of experience in senior B2B sales roles at software companies and has overseen significant, sustained growth at monday.com in the UK and Ireland since joining in 2021. In his new position, Ben’s priorities include delivering the monday.com’s EMEA go-to-market strategy, fostering key partnerships, and bolstering its newly announced AI work platform. He is based in London. Ben’s promotion comes as monday.com builds on a period of rapid regional success, with EMEA revenue up 26% year-on-year in 2025. Last year, monday.com expanded its regional EMEA headquarters in Fitzrovia, London, now occupying 80,000 sq ft across three floors where more than 370 employees are based,
Interactive Brokers Launches Commission-Free iShares ETFs from BlackRock through Recurring Investment Feature Across Europe9.6.2026 11:00:00 EEST | Press release
Interactive Brokers (Nasdaq: IBKR), an automated global broker, today announced the launch of Commission-Free ETFs within its Recurring Investment feature for eligible individual investors across the European Economic Area. Investors can now access more than 500 commission-free iShares ETFs from BlackRock spanning a broad range of asset classes and strategies, including bonds, equities, themes and sectors. The iShares ETFs available on the IBKR platform give individual investors an accessible, cost-efficient way to build well-diversified portfolios. Since investors pay no trading commissions, more of their capital stays invested and compounding over time, while a broad selection of funds across asset classes makes it straightforward to construct and rebalance portfolios. iShares ETFs are available commission-free through IBKR's Recurring Investments feature, allowing investors to automate their periodic ETF contributions. Clients can select individual ETFs or ETF portfolios, set a cont
Forrester Reveals The Top 10 Highest-Performing Brands In Its 2026 Global Total Experience Score Rankings At Its CX Events9.6.2026 10:30:00 EEST | Press release
According to Forrester’s (Nasdaq: FORR) 2026 global Total Experience Score rankings of 375 brands evaluated across Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America in 2025 and 2026, 41% improved their scores while only 3% declined. A compelling total experience — calculated by combining Forrester’s Customer Experience Index (CX Index™), Brand Experience Index (BX Index™), and, for the first time, the new Employee Experience Index (EX Index™) into a unified view of performance — can drive outsized growth for brands. While brand experience and customer experience can each drive revenue independently, the impact multiplies when they are orchestrated together as a unified total experience. In the US, for example, companies delivering a strong total experience see significantly higher returns from retention and enrichment: Automotive firms achieve a 2.6x revenue lift and retailers see a 3.8x increase. The new research finds that CX scores improved in North America, European brands remained mostly st
IQM Announces Novel Quantum Error Correction Approach Toward Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing9.6.2026 10:00:00 EEST | Press release
IQM Quantum Computers, the global leader in superconducting quantum computers, has developed a novel quantum error-correcting code that achieves up to three orders of magnitude lower logical error rates than the surface code, also requiring up to eight times fewer physical qubits. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260609533201/en/ IQM´s breakthrough technology, called barbell codes. Unlike many alternative high-performance quantum error-correction approaches, the new code also maintains a comparatively low hardware complexity, marking a significant advancement toward scalable fault-tolerant quantum computing. Quantum error correction remains one of the defining challenges in the race toward practical quantum computing. Errors introduced by noise must be corrected faster than they accumulate, a requirement that previous approaches demanded either complex hardware or significant performance trade-offs, which IQM's
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom