The Minority Traveler report, based on a survey of 300,000 African-American, Asian-American and Hispanic-American households conducted in 2002, found that travel by minority Americans increased significantly over the previous three years, far outpacing the overall growth of U.S. travel.
Hispanic travel increased 20 percent (from 64.1 million to 77.1 million trips of 50 miles and more), Asian-American travel 10 percent (from 30 million to 33.1 million) and African-American travel 4 percent (from 72.2 million to 75.2 million). U.S. travel overall grew only 2 percent.
| Continue Paula Crouch Thrasher's Atlanta Journal-Constitution article "Atlanta top city to visit for blacks"
African-Americans took nearly as many person-trips as Hispanics, 75 million person-trips in 2002. Once again, we found growth in leisure travel and significant growth in combined business/leisure travel, but steep, greater-than-average declines in business and convention travel between 2000 and 2002.
When compared to the average U.S. traveler, African-America travelers have some unique characteristics. For example, as we saw before among Hispanic-American travelers, many African-American travelers use a rental car as the primary means of getting to their destination. In fact, this propensity is three times higher than average. This is at least partially due to the fact that this group is more likely to live in large metropolitan areas where owning a car may not be necessary. Still, traveling in an owned vehicle remains the most popular way for African-Americans to reach their destinations.
African-American travelers are also likely to enjoy trips that include groups of people with common interests. Group tours are much more popular among African-American travelers than among the other two groups or among U.S. travelers overall. Ten percent of African-American person-trips involve group tours, more than three times the U.S. average.
Shopping is a favorite pastime of African-American travelers with 41 percent of their trips involving this activity, compared to just about one-third for total travelers. African American travelers also have an above-average propensity to visit amusement/theme parks or gambling casinos, and to participate in cultural events or festivals while on their trips. On the other hand, they are less likely than average to include outdoor activities on their trips, such as visiting national or state parks, playing golf, or going skiing.
The most popular destinations for African-American travelers are Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Texas, primarily because they reside in high proportions in the Southern region. Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia are also the top states of origin for African-American travel. In your press kits you’ll also find a listing of the most popular cities of destination for each minority group.
| If you're not inclined to check out the Travel Industry Association of America's press release, there's a portion of Suzanne Cook's TIA Minority Traveler Press Conference remarks to read
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