Why do so few Americans travel abroad compared to Australians and New Zealanders who live very far from other countries?

Mickie S：
Hands up any Australian who has ever been to the USA and hasn’t heard, “Australia! I’d love to go to Australia!” I can’t count how many times I heard it, from my very first trip there.
Somebody would say that to me and I’d say, “Why don’t you go then?”. Then the backpedalling would start. “It’s so far, it takes so long to get there, it costs so much, if only I had the time.”
I’d be thinking to myself it is exactly the same distance from the USA to Australia as it is from Australia to the USA, but I managed it. They seemed to like the idea of travelling, but when it came to doing something about it, suddenly all kinds of obstacles appeared.
So many of my family and friends and I too just decided we wanted to go somewhere, and we did it. We got our passports in order and saved enough to pay for the trips and off we went. Most of us did it alone too. I can hardly remember travelling anywhere that I didn’t run into lone Australians or occasionally couples touring round all kinds of places.
But one thing I did notice was that when I ran into Americans overseas, they were almost always in groups, not always large tour groups, but almost never alone. I may be wrong, but it seemed as if they were never comfortable unless they were sharing the experience with at least a few fellow Americans. I am not talking about loud obnoxious types complaining that it wasn’t the good old USA, but just normal nice every day people. They didn’t seem to be comfortable without at least a few other Americans around.
I can’t help wondering if that is part of the reason at least. Australians and Kiwis have to travel just as far to get there, and much further to get to the UK and Europe. If you decide to travel, it is very easy if you are confident doing it alone. You just pack your bags and go, and that is what most of us do, when we are young at least. It just doesn’t seem to work the same way for Americans.
And something I heard multiple times from others only in America. “A girl/woman travelling alone! You’re so brave!”

Daniel Gerber：
I have thought about this a lot, but as a normal person it’s hard to tease out all the confounding variables and suchlike. But here’s my intuitions:


Maybe the difference isn’t as great as it seems. If you go to Central America there’s a heap of Americans there, so to some degree it’s that Australians travel in different parts of the world than Americans. There’s also a lot of Americans overseas with the Peace Corps and stuff like that, often away from the tourist trails.
Culture. Australia has always had this culture of travel. It’s still a rite of passage for us to work in the UK for a year or two after high school or after university. We still have a cultural cringe towards both the UK and the USA. Many Americans think that they’re the best country on earth; very few Australians think Australia is the best country on earth. Look at our culture … even “Waltzing Matilda” is about a traveller (although not international). Look at some of the iconic Aussie rock songs: “I still call Australia home” (with lines like “I’m always wand’ring, I love being free”), “Down Under”, “I am, You are, We are Australian” (more about celebrating people who travelled to Australia, but still very much about migration and travel).
Likewise, I feel like Australians perhaps idolise this idea of “the bush” perhaps a bit more than Americans do (in the USA this idolatry of rural areas and farmers is more tied up with conservatism than it is in Australia). We like to think we’re tough, resourceful, and like to test our metal. In today’s modern world, particularly in the almost clinical Australian cities, the best way we can do that is to travel.
I’ve heard Americans say “Why would I leave the USA? We’ve got everything I want here and it might be dangerous over there”. I’ve never heard an Australian say that.
Americans are less geographically literate. I don’t know why that is, but it’s obvious that it would impact on their likelihood of travel.
It’s cheaper for us to go overseas than to go to many of the more interesting places in our own country. This isn’t really true for the USA because of much higher populations leading to things like more competition on air routes (e.g. it’s cheaper to fly from Melbourne or Sydney to Kuala Lumpur than to Alice Springs; it’s cheaper to fly to Dubai than to fly to Broome.)
Australia is more expensive than the USA. This means that comparatively, things overseas seem even cheaper for us, and there’s even less incentive to holiday locally.
Our culture is pretty much the same all around the country (except that some places have much more and different Aboriginal culture than others), whereas for some Americans, other parts of their country must feel quite foreign. If I go to Brisbane it just feels like I’ve suddenly discovered a new suburb of Melbourne.
The big one is probably economic. It’s true that Americans are slightly richer than Australians by GDP(PPP) per capita (see here
) but this is not as evenly distributed in the USA as in Australia. I feel like there are a lot of Americans who are really struggling to get by from day to day and for whom even an unexpected US$100 expense could cause them very serious trouble. For Australians, anybody with any fulltime job, even a really lousy one, should if they’re frugal, be able to save enough money for a flight to Bali and a couple of weeks there (well, not in Bali, but they could get a bus from there to somewhere cheaper). While it’s hard to measure inequality, the GINI coefficient
 shows the USA to be about 20% more unequal than Australia.
In a similar vein but more importantly, American student loans work differently than Australian ones, at least until recently. Likewise the health system. Forcing people to pay for expensive health insurance is one solution that kind of works for most Americans, but when an American goes travelling for a year or goes to work or volunteer in a poor country, there’s no way he or she could afford to keep paying for health insurance. Travel insurnace will only patch you up enough to get you back home. For young people this is probably not an issue, but for someone like me it would be. With my pre-existing condition it’s nice that I know that if I get badly sick as long as I can survive the plane trip I’ll have free, world-class, medical care when I get home. There’s no way I could afford to pay the commercial rate for American health insurance while I’m living in China or travelling on the cheap.
Australian workplaces are generally more flexible. In the USA, high-skilled employees can get “sabbaticals” and longer annual leave and suchlike, but lower workers often only get one or two weeks per year, which is not enough for travel. In Australia, four weeks annual leave is the law, and by being a bit creative and not having holidays one or two years, I was able to take about one five-week holiday every year for many yaers while working full time, or two shorter trips. This got me addicted to travel, and my employer then kindly gave me a one-year leave without pay, meaning I didn’t need to worry about finding work when I got back … a few years later they gave me another one. I eventually quit, but I’m grateful to them. Since I was by no means indispensable, I don’t think this would happen at many workplaces in the USA. But the big thing is that we get four weeks annual leave, by law (although of course not everybody gets this, there are many casual employees for instance) whereas many in the USA only get one or two weeks.
The USA’s tax regime which tries to tax all Americans, even those that have never set foot in the USA, discourages some people from living and working in developing countries, where the salaries are lower and so in effect their American tax rate is higher.

Dominic Frank：
New Zealand there is a real push to travel as an important rite of passage especially for the young, and also as a cultural requirement, which harks back to my grandparents generation who actually thought they were British. Yes alot of kiwis and Australians (it was the same for Australians) today don’t realise this but up until 80–100 years ago people in these counties identifed as British. All the magazines they read, the t.v. and movies they watched, the radio, was British. British was the suprerior world culture they believed. This began to change with the ANZAC experience in WW1.
My point is that as a colonial, a “British subject" it has always been an thing to return to the motherland. The centre of culture. Much like individuals inhabiting the outreaches of the Roman Empire would make a pilgrimage to Rome once in a lifetime and Greeks in say Bactria (modern day Uzbekistan) back to Attica. Its the same impulse. This may sound a bit wacky but its true! Thats where this expectation to travel comes from in the culture of these two country's. Its deeply ingrained in the collective psyche and harks back to our colonials roots. Even today the vast majoirty of young still choose the UK, specifically London, over everywhere else
America, on the other hand, is a totally different beast. They believe they are -rightly or wrongly-the centre of the universe. America is also a vast and diverse land with much to offer, so much entertainment and stimulation, the need to travel internationally is not pressing.

Donald Eigendorff：
Part of the answer lies within your question - the distance from other countries. Yes, fewer American travel abroad than say Australians or New Zealanders, but there are many factors, other than nationality, at play. Many Americans travel abroad, but because of geography (distance), Americans, like Europeans, have access to a wider variety of places to visit closer to home. The US is huge and very culturally diverse in and of itself - a trip to NYC alone can often offer a taste of the world - not literally of course. We can travel to places like Puerto Rico, with its own unique culture and beauty, without leaving the country. Canada, with cities like Montreal, Quebec, and Vancouver, is just to the north - often in driving distance. And Mexico, is just to our south - so cities like Mexico City and Oaxaca, present very unique travel opportunities fairly close to home. Of course, traveling abroad is a wonderful experience, and many, many Americans travel quite widely. However, I think economic status has more to do with peoples travel habits than their nationality. In my opinion, Americans with the means to travel are not very different than Australians or New Zealanders with the means to travel. Also, the two-week vacation thing is hardly the rule. Depending on the amount of time on the job, and flexibility at your workplace, time off cany vary widely and is very often more than two weeks.
Sadly, I have not been to Australia or New Zealand, and I would love to see both. Air travel time and cost to a certain degree are factors, and flying these days is not a pure delight, maybe an understatement. So, for me, and at my age, a country like Mexico offers endless places of interest and the opportunity to use and improve my Spanish.

Mark Roberts：

The culture of Australia and NZ remains very British in many small ways, so travel to Britain feels very natural; Europe is just across the Channel, and why not stop over somewhere exotic on the way there?
Maybe Americans don’t have the same “easy introduction” to overseas travel.

Ronald Debose：
Americans tend to be a bit more insular than Australians and New Zealanders, who are used to living far away from other countries.
Americans have the luxury of being able to travel within their own country without having to cross any borders, so they don't feel as much of an urge or need for international travel.
Additionally, many Americans may not have the financial means or resources available that would make it easier for them to take trips abroad.
Finally, there is also a cultural element at play here; some people in America may simply prefer staying close by rather than venturing out into unknown territory!

Suzie Q：

Probably because Australians are more adventurous than Americans. We want to learn through experience instead of what others tell us.

Tony deAraujo：
The United States is composed of 50 different States. Even within States, the cultural diversity is phenomenal.
This question assumes that most Americans don’t travel abroad, which is incorrect.
Some Americans (probably millions) never go anywhere, except perhaps for a long weekend in the Bahamas, or Cancun. This has to do with the limited free time available.
I’ve lived most of my life in the United States, but I’ve been around the world and worked in several different Continents.
In fact, with the exception of one or two friends, I don’t know anyone in America that hasn’t traveled to other countries for business or pleasure.
Yes, there are pockets of Americans that don’t care to travel (or can’t afford to take the time off, or even pay for traveling expenses), but that is a minority, and most other countries have pockets like these as well.
The United States of America is made up of people from all over the world. They have roots abroad and they visit their families outside of the country.
When we speak of “Americans”, we compare them with people from other countries such as France, England, and Australia… That’s comparing apples with bananas. Americans should be compared to Europeans (as of European Community), or any other Union of countries. Other than that, we need to compare France with Texas, or England with California, perhaps New Jersey with Portugal. That’s more appropriate.
The Americans I know, travel extensively.
By the way, there is no difference between an Englishman traveling to Portugal and a New Yorker traveling to Florida. The United States is composed of 50 different countries plus territories. No passport is need for interstate traveling.

Ryan Issacs：
I would wager that the need to go overseas to find what one is looking for would be a major factor.
The United States has remarkable diversity. There is every kind of ecosystem you can think of there and sizeable cultural differences from state to state. A New Yorker is going to have a completely different experience in, say, Arizona than at home. Meanwhile, Australian culture is not as diverse geographically. Our most pressing cultural divide is whether you say “scallop” or “potato cake”. New Zealand is similar in this way.
Australia also has a lot of ecological diversity, but all the interesting stuff tends to be where few people live, so there is little infrastructure and it becomes harder to visit. It can be easier, quicker, and sometimes cheaper (Australia is an expensive place to visit, even if you’re already here), to fly overseas than to visit some parts of Australia. New Zealand is easier to get around, but that may actually make it less appealing for a holiday if you’re already there. Why spend a couple of weeks to see Milford Sound when you could do it in a long weekend? Also, like Australia, New Zealand can be quite expensive.
I know this kind of question isn’t a place where politics should come into it, but there is also a political element to all of this. A large part of right-wing thinking in the US is centred on America being the greatest place on Earth by every possible metric. The word “European” is often thrown around as an insult in these circles. To leave the US, even for a holiday, would be admitting that there might be something worth seeing outside of it.
Australia and New Zealand have people who think this way, but not in the sheer numbers that the United States does.