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U.S. inbound travel market experiencing a renaissance

July 20, 2012 | Hotel Marketing

After decades of catering to a national source market, travel and tour suppliers in the U.S. are realigning their business models to draw more inbound tourism as emerging markets such as China, Brazil and India begin to overtake the U.S. as the leading source market for travel.

While the U.S. is by no means a source market that can be overlooked, the so-called BRIC countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- are showing the most growth in terms of outbound tourism and are poised to become significant source markets in the coming years. In fact, based on current year-over-year growth figures, China could surpass the U.S. as early as this year in spending by outbound travelers.

The fact that foreign markets are where the growth is happening is not lost on U.S.-based travel companies. After decades of catering to a source market here that has always ranked high, if not highest, in outbound tourism, they are starting to look at ways of reconfiguring business models to capture these emerging source markets.

One way of doing that is for U.S. companies -- especially U.S. companies with domestic product -- to invest in the inbound travel market, which is experiencing a renaissance following a decade-long, post-9/11 slump.

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