America’s Foreign Vacations Tell Us Something About the U.S. Economy

Forget Emily. These days, a whole flood of Americans are in Paris.

People spent 2020 and 2021 either cooped up at home or traveling sparingly and mostly within the continental U.S. But after Covid travel restrictions were lifted for international trips last summer, Americans are again headed overseas.

While domestic leisure travel shows signs of calming — people are still vacationing in big numbers, but prices for hotels and flights are moderating as demand proves strong but not insatiable — foreign trips are snapping back with a vengeance. Americans are boarding planes and cruise ships to flock to Europe in particular, based on early data.

According to estimates from AAA, international travel bookings for 2023 were up 40 percent from 2022 through May. That is still down about 2 percent from 2019, but it’s a hefty surge at a time when some travelers are being held back by long passport processing delays amid record-high applications. Tour and cruise bookings are expected to eclipse prepandemic highs, with especially strong demand for vacations to major European cities.

Paris, for example, experienced a huge jump in North American tourists last year compared with 2021, according to the city’s tourism bureau. Planned air arrivals for July and August of this year climbed by another 14.4 percent — to nearly 5 percent above the 2019 level.

“This year is just completely crazy,” said Steeve Calvo, a Parisian tour guide and sommelier whose company — The Americans in Paris — has been churning out visits to Normandy and French wine regions. He attributes some of the jump to a rebound from the pandemic and some to television shows and social media.

“‘Emily in Paris’: I never saw so many people in Paris with red berets,” he said, noting that the signature chapeau of the popular Netflix show’s heroine started to pop up on tourists last year. Other newcomers are eager to take coveted photos for their Instagram pages.

“In Versailles, the Hall of Mirrors, I call it the Hall of Selfie,” Mr. Calvo said, referring to a famous room in the palace.

Robust travel booking numbers and anecdotes from tour guides align with what companies say they are experiencing: From airlines to American Express, corporate executives are reporting a lasting demand for flights and vacations.

“The constructive industry backdrop is unlike anything that any of us have ever seen,” Ed Bastian, the chief executive officer at Delta Air Lines, said during a June 27 investor…