U.S. travel exports grew more than twice as fast as overall exports in 2012, according to the U.S. Travel Association, which on Friday released its analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce's year-end export data. Travel exports, it revealed, reached a record high of $168.1 billion last year.
"Year-end figures … reveal that travel exports reached an all-time high last year, making 2012 one for the history books,” U.S. Travel Association Senior Vice President of Research and Economics David Huether said in a statement. “Spending by international visitors in the U.S. spurred travel exports to the highest level in four years.”
While overall U.S. exports grew just 4 percent in 2012, travel exports more than doubled that pace, up 10 percent, according to Huether. “The last time travel exports grew this much faster than overall U.S. exports was in 1990,” he continued. “The travel industry also posted a third consecutive year of double-digit export growth in 2012, a feat that has not been accomplished in two decades.”
Notably, its rapid growth of travel exports had a positive impact on the country’s travel trade surplus. "With travel exports growing faster than imports, the trade surplus in travel also rose to a record of $50 billion in 2012 from $43 billion in 2011,” Huether concluded. “This $7 billion increase in the travel trade surplus is particularly encouraging, because it accounted for more than a third (37 percent) of the overall improvement in the U.S. trade balance last year.”
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