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When you travel frequently, whether for business or leisure, it can be easy to forget that not everyone is as fortunate. Can you believe that eleven percent of Americans have never even traveled outside the state where they were born? Read on for some more interesting statistics…

Commissioned by Victorinox (manufacturers of luggage and Swiss Army Knives), a marketing research study of 2,000 Americans was conducted via survey to get an idea of U.S. citizens’ travel experiences and to find out why people didn’t travel more.

What Did The Survey Find?

The results were pretty surprising and might even explain a little bit about why Americans have some knowledge gaps about the rest of the world. Take a look…

• 11% percent of the respondents have never traveled outside of the state where they were born.
• 54% of those who were surveyed have visited 10 states or less.
• 13% of the people who took the survey said they had never flown in a plane.
• 40% of respondents reported that they had never left the country (but 63% of those said that an international trip would cost more than they could afford. 25% said they can’t find the time to travel. But three-quarters of them would like to travel more than they do).
• Over half of those surveyed said they’ve never owned a passport (note: Until 2009, U.S. citizens didn’t need a passport to enter Canada or Mexico or to go on a cruise, which might have something to do with those numbers. I suspect that percentage will go down over the years.).
• 76% of the people who took the survey said they would like to travel more than they do, but don’t because of finances, trepidation, lack of time, etc.

And the response that I personally found the most interesting? 10% of the people surveyed said they have no interest in going anywhere. Now, I’m sitting here thinking how cool it is that I’ve been able to go to all these places in the U.S. and around the world, met people from so many different corners of the globe, and got to learn about them and how the same and different we all are…and 10% of Americans (assuming the 2,000 people are an adequate representation of the country as a whole) have no interest in going anywhere? I know it’s different strokes for different folks but….wow. Y’know?

The survey was originally conducted in 2017. I was hoping someone would do another one that could reflect today’s travelers (or non-travelers, LOL). So I kept searching and finally found a study done by Pew in 2021. Not 2024, but hey, it’s better.

What Pew said

Pew focused more on traveling abroad than just travel in general. But they also gave some interesting statistics on the 10,000+ people they surveyed:

• 71% of their respondents (all US adults) said they had some sort of international travel in their lives. Of those, 19% had been to only one foreign country, 12% to two countries, 15% to three or four countries, and 14% to five to nine countries. Only 11% of Americans who had been in the study had been to 10 or more countries.
• 48% of people who earned less than $30k/year (again, this was 2021) had never left the country. 28% of those who earn between $30,000 and $79,999 had never left US soil. And 10% of earners of $80k or more had also never left the US.
• Education levels also affect how much you travel internationally. 37% of those with just some college education or less said they had never left the country, compared with only 7% of those who have graduated college.
• Women (32%) were more likely than men (22%) to have never traveled outside the country.
• Race appears to also be a factor. At the time of the survey, Black Americans were much less likely to have ever traveled abroad (49% had) than White (75% had) or Hispanic Americans (73% had). White adults are also more likely to have been to five or more countries (30%) than Black (13%) or Hispanic (15%) adults.

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