Visa: Shorter, more frequent trips and paying with credit money

SINGAPORE - Visa announced the findings of the payment network's comprehensive look at travel and tourism in 2017. Visa's Global Travel Intentions (GTI) Study highlights various parts of the travelers' journey and found a key motivator for travel is stress relief. The Study also uncovered certain aspects of travel can also lead to anxiety and stress, including getting, carrying and exchanging cash. Visa's cashless solutions offer the freedom to pay anywhere in the world while helping you get a competitive exchange rate when you pay in local currency. While paying in one's home currency may seem familiar, those purchases, when made overseas, can usually assess conversion-related commissions and overall price mark ups.

2018 Macro Trends in Travel
In addition to examining the motivations and planning tactics, the GTI Study of outbound travelers from 27 countries and territories also uncovered a number of macro trends expected to continue into 2018:

• Trips are getting shorter: The global average is now eight nights, down from 10 nights on average in 2013.
• More trips abroad: Globally, people are planning to take more trips in the future, from an average of 2.5 trips in the past two years to 2.7 trips in the next two years. The Americas lead the pack in number of trips in the past two years, taking an average of 3.2 trips in 2017.
• Technology is helping some travelers better navigate their destinations: 88 percent of travelers gained online access while abroad. Almost half (44 percent) use ride-sharing apps to get around once they are on the ground.
• Multi-destination: 11 percent of global travel includes visits to multiple countries.
• Japan, the United States and Australia are the most visited countries: Japan has overtaken the United States as the most popular destination for global travelers in the past two years. Regional preferences prevail, though, with travelers in the Asia Pacific region leaning heavily toward Japan as a travel destination. American travelers prefer continental Europe, though Mexico, Canada and Japan are also highly desirable.
• Top spenders: Saudi Arabians are the top spenders when it comes to what travelers spend on their entire trips, including the booking stage as well as expenditures at the destination, with Chinese, Australians, Americans and Kuwaitis rounding out the top five.

Simplifying Payment Abroad
Travelers are increasingly using technology to plan their trips and navigate their destinations -- 83 percent of travelers used technology for this purpose in 2017 compared to 78 percent in 2015. Yet the majority of them are still decidedly analog when it comes to making payments internationally.

While many travelers use cards while on vacation, most (77 percent) still prefer to use cash when making purchases. Using a Visa card to pay in local currency could help international travelers get a more competitive exchange rate and possibly help them avoid being hit with hidden currency conversion fees when they get home. The Study also found the following themes related to the use of cash while traveling internationally:

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