Summary
Wealthier households, earning over $100,000, are dominating holiday travel this year, making up 45% of travelers and over half of paid lodging customers, according to Deloitte.
Rising costs, including airfare and luxury accommodations, have priced out lower-income households, whose travel participation has declined.
Affluent travelers are driving demand for premium experiences, with high-end destinations seeing significant price increases. Meanwhile, budget-conscious travelers are cutting costs by staying with family or using credit to fund trips.
Inflation continues to strain travel budgets across income levels, with 29% of travelers expecting to take on debt.
No shit? It would be weirder if people who couldn’t afford to travel were dominating travel.
This just in, people with money have more to spend.
NBC considers households over $100k as “rich people”. Sigh…
How else can the media try to find yet more ways to divide everyone? Division sells clicks. NBC is especially good at talking about economic nonsense in ways that sound like talking points or information when it’s really just “we’re broadcasting this message that the actual rich want everyone else to react to, so those actual rich can get richer.”
In this case, it’s subtle marketing, the goal, is to make “less-rich” people go stay at a hotel and order that upgrade to a king bed.
Example:
$50,000/yr person: “I’m going to stick it to the $100k rich person! You know, the one that’s living like a king, who drove to the Motel 6 across the street in a 10 year old used Prius. Yeah! See? I can live like a rich person too! Orders overpriced hotel room beer, Suck it rich person!”
Actual rich person: eyes light up like Christmas as their billions continue to grow from a troll article.
In the US, median household income was $80,610 in 2023. So it’s not surprising that 55% of holiday travelers have household income under $100K.
People who make 6 figures are rich?
Depends what end of 6 figures. That’s a pretty broad range.
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According to this website about 41% of US households make at least 6 figures pre-taxes. Not that rich apparently.
EDIT: Got the numbers mixed up, initially I wrote 59% - which is the percentage of people making less.
I am a 59%-er and this feels much less freedomish than being a kid with dad making only 35k. Where does my money go?
Into the pockets of billionaires. If you’re not in the 1% these days you aren’t rich, you’re middle class.
According to every other website I went to, only around 34% make at least 6 figures.
https://www.supermoney.com/how-many-people-make-over-100k
https://www.marketingscoop.com/small-business/how-many-people-make-over-100k/
These links cite out-of-date numbers. The latest numbers are significantly higher.
Roughly 40% of households are currently over $100K, which is not that different than the 45% of travelers who are over $100K.
https://www.marketingscoop.com/small-business/how-many-people-make-over-100k/ only 15.5% of households earn between $100,000 and $150,000 annually. Including those making $150k or above, the percentage rises to 34.1%. That means a full 85.5% of US households get by on less than a six-figure income.
This person needs to check their math…
Yeah, I laughed at how badly that last one messed up their math.
I fixed my post - according to my source 59% make less than 6 figures, not more. It’s still different to your sources, but not by as large a margin. Thanks for cross-checking!
I went to that site, and I interpreted it exactly like you did. They really were not clear about how they presented their data.
So… that leads me to think 45% of travelers having incomes over 100k this thanksgiving means they’re underrepresented and thus are not dominating travel in the slightest?
Assuming the 59% number is correct, then you’re right.
EDIT: The number is not correct. It is closer to 33%.
I don’t know shit about taxes in the US, but a solid guess would be that 45% is actually proportional to the amount of households making 6 figures post-taxes.
We don’t generally measure post-tax (or “take-home”) income in economics discussions. Gross income is the preferred measure because it allows for a more like:like comparison.
If you don’t have at least $10 million in liquid assets then you aren’t rich. In a less fucked up timeline what this article is calling rich would have been qualified as middle class. They’re just trying to shift the definitions to hide how out of control income inequality has gotten and how rampant poverty is becoming. With the current market prices, nevermind the absolute shit show it’s about to become, an income of less than $50k should be considered below the poverty line.
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Laughable tbh. You aren’t rich until you can stop working.
I consider someone who makes 900,000 a year rich.
Nice pulling a number out your ass. Now do the math from the article
Households of 100k…for two earners.
Can you divide 100k by 2 kid?
No no you can’t apparently cuz it’s not 900k
Go Google non sequitur.
What do you mean pull it out of my ass? The article said six figures. Is 900k not six figures? Is 900k any less six figures than 100k?
Also I’m not sure what math you’re quoting here. None of that’s in the article. Children aren’t even mentioned.
Who would’ve thought? Thanks, NBC!
Over $100,000 isn’t exactly wealthy anymore. Under $100,000, in some areas, is a real struggle. The poverty line for a family of four if $31,000. You’d have to get pretty far past that to consider traveling for leisure.
🤯
This is normal.
It’s open season on consumers. Americans, born into consumerism, raised on consumerism, and soaked in the purifying propaganda of consumerism on a daily basis are confused. “Why I can no buy as much?”
Because (as a nation) we don’t delete Facebook, we don’t get off Xitter, we don’t stop watching TV ads, we don’t pirate media, and we do the same things we’ve always done - watch TV (or as the kids say, “looking at the Internet”). They’re just picking us off one service fee at a time.
The answer is simple and relatively easy, we just don’t wanna.
