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My family travels internationally, but I agree that most Americans do not. There are likely a few reasons:
1. Lack of vacation time. Here, you can work somewhere for 10 years and get 10 or 15 days of vacation pay... if you're lucky.
2. The USA is enormous and traveling domestically allows you to see mountains and plains, oceans and lakes, deserts and swamps, snow and extreme heat, major cities and very rural areas, places where the primary language is Spanish or French or Chinese, and on and on. Many feel that there is not a need to spend more to travel outside of the country to experience a variety of locations.
3. Travel is assumed to be expensive and many people have no idea how to do it inexpensively. Also, even if people do know how to do it less-expensively, many struggle just to pay for their housing/food/necessary expenses.
4. American exceptionalism being what it is, a large segment believes there's no need to leave the country and that nothing will ever be as good as the good ole U. S. of A.
5. Fear of other cultures runs rampant in some circles. I don't think I need to elaborate on this one.
Personally, there is so much in the US that I want to explore before I die.
I think this is one of the reasons besides expense and lack of long vacation periods vs. people of other Western countries. (Personally I have been outside the USA many times as have all my immediate family members. But I do have relatives/extended family members who have never traveled outside of North America.)
Well the US is the size of a continent, if you live here (UK) and you want some 'Winter' sun then you need to go abroad, if you live here and you want to ski you are going to have to go abroad (Scottish resorts are a bit too hit and miss with snow), if however you live in the US and you want 'Winter' sun you could always go to Florida and I'm sure there are plenty of ski'ing opportunities there too.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Originally Posted by AnotherTouchOfWhimsy
My family travels internationally, but I agree that most Americans do not. There are likely a few reasons:
1. Lack of vacation time. Here, you can work somewhere for 10 years and get 10 or 15 days of vacation pay... if you're lucky.
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I think this is a big thing. When I went to Cambodia I basically used more than half of my yearly vacation time on just that trip. The people I met from France, etc were on holiday for 6 weeks at time.
I think this is a big thing. When I went to Cambodia I basically used more than half of my yearly vacation time on just that trip. The people I met from France, etc were on holiday for 6 weeks at time.
A friend just went and I think one flight was 17 hours, and she also had another flight. Assuming it takes 24 hours of transit time one way... most people just don’t have time to use 2 full days to get to their destination. What makes it worse is that you actually lose a day when you go over there, so if you leave on Sunday, you don’t even get Monday because you will arrive late on Monday. I just went to Hong Kong and left Sunday afternoon (nonstop flight) and got in fairly late on Monday. I only get 12 days a year and used 7 for that, but I can build up comp time. It is not insignificant.
I think this is a big thing. When I went to Cambodia I basically used more than half of my yearly vacation time on just that trip. The people I met from France, etc were on holiday for 6 weeks at time.
That was my point at the top of the thread. For me, Cambodia is probably a 7 hour flight to the west coast, 12 hours to an Asian hub, and another 3 to Cambodia. Easily 24 hours travel time door-to-door and ~12 hour time zone change. I've done business class trips to Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea for work. On my dime, I did a 3 week New Zealand summer ski trip when I was taking 2 years off from work. Working, Asia for leisure travel is off my radar screen. It's kind of pointless to go for less than 3 weeks from the east coast. Employers will let the Indian kids take 2 consecutive weeks to go home. I'd get enormous pushback anywhere I ever worked for taking 3 weeks unless it was over the Christmas holiday period when nothing much is ever going on.
We go to Europe all the time. We have a May trip and an October trip this year. We take the Boston/London-Heathrow morning flight. Wheels up at Logan at 8am. In passport control in London at 7pm. It's shorter flight time than LAX because of the big jet stream tail wind. I can do that in an economy aisle seat with no problem. Sleep in a real bed that night and then continue on to our final destination the next morning already mostly acclimated to the time zone. We usually go for 10 days/9 nights so it's only 7 vacation days.
I fly on frequent flyer points but I noticed that BOS/LHR is sub-$400 for an October round trip flight. That's cheaper than most of the LAX flights.
The folks mentioning limited vacation time are spot on. Most companies here only provide 10 days of vacation per year to start, and depending on their policy, you might get 15 days/year once you hit the 5 year mark, then 20 days/year at 10 years. A lot of us don't stick around at a company long enough to get to that point, for various reasons. Couple that with the expense of flying overseas and the amount of time it takes to do so, the logistics just aren't as favorable.
Americans do travel overseas. Cambodia and Laos are just way down the list of desirable vacation destinations. I have never even remotely considered going to Cambodia and to be honest, probably never will. There are many other places far higher on my must see list. Go to pretty much anywhere in Europe and American tourists are everywhere.
It is a myth, still frequently stated these days, that Americans do not travel overseas.
That is false.
Americans do like to travel overseas. Even though the most popular international destination for Americans is Mexico (easy to understand why), Americans do in fact travel to multiple destinations abroad.
I like being in foreign countries. I don't like being in a pressurized metal tube for 16 hours
For me, the disincentive isn't about money, but rather about time.
I enjoy visiting other countries, but when just getting "overseas" burns a vacation day just getting there (and another getting back), it's a tough choice when my coworkers are already unhappy that I'm taking a full week (or longer) off and sticking them with all my work.
Plus the more foreign travel I do, the more I have to document and answer questions about for federal security clearance.
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I like being in foreign countries. I don't like being in a pressurized metal tube for 16 hours
