The American tourist is back in Europe, and this time he brought everyone he has ever met. Americans will make a record 24 million trips to Europe this year. Twenty-four million. That is a lot of gelato consumed within limping distance of a cathedral. The continent has noticed. So should your retirement plan.
Start with the passports. More than half of Americans now hold one. In 1990, fewer than 5% did. In one generation, we went from a country that mostly stayed home to a country that shows up in Lisbon asking whether the kitchen could possibly do dinner at 5:30.
Getting there is not cheap, and nobody seems to care. Economy airfare has climbed 56% over the past decade, and the average one-way ticket now runs $588. The airlines raised the price; Americans responded by buying more tickets. Economists have a word for this. Grandchildren have a different one: "Grandma's in Rome again."
Out-spending the Germans
Once they land, Americans spend like Americans. In Spain, the typical U.S. visitor runs through about $350 a day. The German visitor — historically Europe's most reliably careful guest — spends about $200. We are out-spending the Germans. On their own continent. Somewhere, an economist just had to sit down.
This is not a budget-travel wave, either. More than 15% of American visitors to Europe report household incomes above $300,000. Behind the whole parade sits the great engine: baby boomers holding roughly $110 trillion in wealth, converting a slice of it, trip by trip, into memories and museum tickets.
At the far end of the runway, some households now spend $60,000 to $70,000 a year on travel. Per year. That is not a vacation budget. That is a second mortgage that sends postcards.
The next generation does it differently but does it all the same. Gen Z travelers are asking Claude, the AI assistant, to plan $3,000 trips to Greece — the grand tour at a fraction of the boomer tab.
Europe, for its part, is not uniformly thrilled. Mallorca has seen street protests over tourism, and Airbnb crackdowns are spreading city by city. When 24 million trips land on the same beaches, the beaches eventually push back.
| The American abroad | Number |
|---|---|
| U.S. trips to Europe this year | 24 million — a record |
| Americans holding passports | >50% (under 5% in 1990) |
| Average one-way economy fare | $588 (+56% in a decade) |
| Daily spend in Spain — U.S. visitor | $350 |
| Daily spend in Spain — German visitor | $200 |
| Europe visitors reporting $300k+ income | >15% |
Now the serious part
Here is where we set down the sangria. For many of the people we serve, travel is not a treat bolted onto retirement. It is the point of retirement. And anything that is the point deserves to be planned like the point — not hidden in the budget under "miscellaneous."
A $60,000 travel year is a real spending line, as real as property taxes or health premiums. And it comes with a deadline nobody prints. Planners call the first stretch of retirement the "go-go years" — the window when the knees, the energy, and the curiosity are all still voting yes.
That window argues for spending the travel money early. Front-load the trips while the walking tours are still walkable, and let the later, quieter years cost less. A plan that spreads travel evenly across thirty years is quietly planning to waste some of it.
So we build travel as its own named bucket: deliberately funded, deliberately spent early. The line outside the Uffizi is long. It is still shorter than the list of people who saved perfectly for a trip they never took.