America's Favorite Flight Destinations in 2023

09.11.2023 - 17:31 / skift.com / Sean Oneill / London

Americans went abroad in large numbers in 2023, and data on flight bookings has revealed their top destinations internationally and domestically — along with their most common departure cities.

Cancún led in popularity. About 17.5% of all flight bookings made were for the Mexican resort town in the prime leisure travel span of January through August 2023. The U.S.-to-Cancún bookings were at 91% of 2019’s pre-pandemic level.

Fun fact: Cancún is an invention of the Mexican government, which in 1969 took an undeveloped stretch of beach and began to create a tourism mecca. It has been a remarkable success to become the top U.S. tourism spot of 2023.

London was the second-most popular destination from U.S. airports.

Destinations that have risen in the rankings of share of total bookings since pre-pandemic times include San Juan, Puerto Rico; San Jose del Cabo, Mexico; and Tel Aviv, Israel (before the conflict broke out in October).

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A note on the data: Most flight bookings made by online travel agencies and traditional travel agencies are processed through three technology companies: Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport. Amadeus Market Intelligence aggregates high-level data from . This provides a snapshot of booking patterns reflecting the overwhelming majority of tickets booked by Americans. Skift requested the numbers.

Let’s change the question. The above table shows where Americans fly the most when they’re traveling abroad. What about blending in domestic flights, too?

Unsurprisingly, domestic destinations are relatively more visited than foreign ones. What may surprise, however, is which destinations rank high this year. After the pandemic, the rankings have scrambled. Data is for January through October.

An aggregation of other smaller U.S. cities accounted for 28.5% of the flight bookings in the period. Their share of overall flight bookings is only back to 69% of the pre-pandemic level. For one possible explanation, read Airline Weekly’s “Small Cities Lose Air Service as Large Airlines Exit.”

So, who is buying all of this travel? Another chart provides a hint of where the travelers are coming from.

Below is a glimpse of flight bookings between January and October by departure market. This table shows the share of bookings and ranking for flights from U.S. origin cities to both domestic and international destinations. It compares 2023 with 2019 to get a sense of how closely patterns have returned to pre-pandemic times.

A key takeaway: One out of five flights in 2023 were booked to depart from the New York City area. That dominance partly explains why air traffic control is often such a nightmare in the New York metropolitan area.

U.S. cities not mentioned in this table accounted for 21.6% of flight