UNITED STATES outbound travel in 2003 dropped for the third straight year; yet travel to overseas destinations showed a strong rebound during the later part the year according to figures only just issued by the Office of Travel and Tourism Industries, part of Washington”s Department of Commerce. Mexico and Canada suffered the worst with the rest of the world up 5%. In 2003, 56.2m US residents travelled abroad for one night or longer. This was down 3% from 2002 and not that much less than the outbound record of 61m in 2000. Mexico was once again the lead destination with 17.6m travellers and Canada the number two at 14.2m. The top five overseas markets visited by US travellers in 2003 were the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Jamaica. Of these, the only markets to experience an increase over 2002 were the UK, which increased to 3.3m plus 1% and Jamaica to 1.5m. Other countries showed large percentage gains but the actual numbers were small. Other statistics issued by the travel and tourism office include top outbound cities, package tourism, decision times and spend.
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