Most Travel To Visit Friends and Family

Vacation time in the U.S. is seeing people flocking to beaches and rushing into the Great Outdoors. However, looking at the most common type of leisure trip taken in the U.S., it's a visit to friends and family, followed by a city trip. When the survey by Statista Consumer Insights was last carried out between October 2024 and September of 2025, 56 percent of U.S. respondents said they had visited friends and family in the past 12 months. 30 percent said they had taken a city trip (of course these two can also mean the same thing). Still, 32 percent or nearly a third of the U.S. had taken a beach holiday in the given year.

While less popular than the beach, a quarter of Americans had taken a vacation in nature/the outdoors. 20 percent said they had been camping and 18 percent said they had been on an active vacation, which can include hiking, biking, cycling or adventure sports. Cruises are also popular, at 15 percent having booked one for the year prior to the survey.

According to Booking.com, advice from friends and family is also the top one travel inspiration for Americans (with the advice potentially being: Why don't you come and visit me?). Package holidays are not as common in the U.S. as in Europe and China, while the country still beats the Asian tourism giant in terms of the absolute size of its domestic travel market.