A crowded airport shows movement, not what people gave up to pay for a trip. Yet those questions are often compressed into the claim that travelers are “spending more on experiences.” The available evidence supports a narrower, more useful reading: vacations appear to be winning a larger place in some consumers’ plans and discretionary budgets. It does not put a price on an “experience,” nor prove that spending on possessions has fallen.
A U.S. commercial survey supplies the budget signal; another commercial survey records intended trips. Global arrival counts confirm movement, not spending. Together, they suggest a priority, not a worldwide spending total.
The budget signal starts in the United States
In its October 2025 Winter Edition of Portrait of American Travelers, MMGY Travel Intelligence reported that U.S. travelers were devoting larger portions of their disposable income to vacations and that travel demand had reached a four-year high. The research covered roughly 4,500 U.S. adults. MMGY is a travel-marketing research firm, so this is commercial research about its market, not an independent measure of household spending across the economy.
The reported share matters: vacations are claiming more after-tax income among the surveyed U.S. travelers. That does not necessarily mean every respondent spent more dollars. A share can change when income or other outlays change; the pack gives no amounts to resolve that. Nor does it tell us how that vacation money was divided among transport, lodging, meals, activities or fees. Calling the whole trip an “experience” may describe a consumer’s reason for going, but it is not an expense category measured here.
MMGY’s four-year-high claim concerns U.S. demand in its research, not every destination or income group. The defensible inference is that many surveyed Americans made room for vacations—not that consumers everywhere rejected goods.
Intent broadens the picture, with a different blind spot
Expedia Group’s commercial 2025 Traveler Value Index, conducted with Wakefield Research, surveyed 11,000 respondents across 11 markets. It reported that 88% of surveyed consumers planned a leisure trip in the following year and 68% aimed to book international travel. Expedia described the international figure as up 19% since 2022. These are stated plans across several markets, beyond MMGY’s U.S. audience.
They do not show 88% of people actually took a trip or that 68% completed an international booking. A plan must still meet prices, available time and personal obligations. Nor should a survey commissioned by an online travel company be mistaken for a census of global travelers. The research pack gives the sample size and market count, but not enough detail to establish how well respondents represent all consumers in those markets. People who are engaged with travel planning may be more visible in research relevant to an online travel agency. That possibility does not invalidate the responses; it limits how far the percentages can be projected.
The two studies answer different questions: MMGY reports U.S. vacation budget share; Expedia records plans across 11 markets. Budget priority and travel intention point in the same direction, but neither isolates activity spending from other trip costs.
Arrivals confirm movement, not the size of the bill
A third measure provides a reality check of a different kind. UN Tourism’s World Tourism Barometer, in its first 2026 edition, estimated 1.52 billion international tourist arrivals worldwide in 2025, 4% more than in 2024. That confirms cross-border travel volume without asking what people hoped to do.
Yet an arrival is not a receipt. The count cannot say how much each visitor spent, whether a journey was leisure travel, or whether its cost came from a larger share of household income. It also says nothing about domestic vacations, which sit outside an international-arrivals measure. The pack provides no verified aggregate spending series that could settle the article’s broad money claim. Volume corroborates that travel happened at scale; it cannot turn reported budget choices into a measured global increase in experience spending.
Why the priority can be real without a universal story
The phrase “experiences over things” offers an appealing explanation, but the surveys do not ask us to choose between a flight and a sofa. A more grounded interpretation is that some people are protecting a trip within a finite budget because time away has become important to them. That choice might lead to fewer other discretionary purchases, a different kind of trip, or postponing travel until it is affordable. The sources do not measure which response is most common.
Other explanations remain hypotheses. Someone who has delayed a milestone purchase might allocate money to a vacation; a smaller household might find a trip easier to arrange; someone whose priorities changed after pandemic disruptions might choose time away sooner. None of the three sources establishes how many travelers fit those descriptions or whether such circumstances caused the reported shift. They are ways to think about a decision, not new findings.
There is also a difference between a priority and a purchase. Survey respondents can sincerely intend to go abroad and later book a shorter or closer trip. A larger intended vacation budget can shrink when other costs intervene. MMGY’s self-reports and Expedia’s plans should be checked against completed spending before anyone claims that experience purchases have overtaken other categories. The UN Tourism count cannot perform that check.
For a reader planning a trip, the takeaway is practical: treat the apparent shift as permission to ask what the vacation is worth to you, not as evidence that spending more is automatically wise. Set the amount you can actually use, including the unglamorous costs of getting and staying there, then choose the time and activities that matter within it. The trend may explain why the trip feels worth protecting. It cannot decide what your budget should bear.
