U.S. citizens took 9,308,594 international trips in March 2026, an increase of 5.2 percent over March 2025 and 11.2 percent above pre-pandemic March 2019 levels, according to National Travel and Tourism Office data. Inbound visitor arrivals to the U.S., by contrast, rose just 2 percent year-over-year and remain well short of their 2019 benchmark, at 88.5 percent of pre-pandemic volume — a widening gap between how eagerly Americans are leaving the country and how eagerly the world is coming back to visit it.
Key Points
- U.S. citizen departures hit 9,308,594 in March 2026, up 5.2% from March 2025 and equal to 111.2% of March 2019 volume.
- Non-U.S. resident arrivals to the U.S. reached 5,537,310, up 2% year-over-year but still just 88.5% of March 2019 levels.
- Mexico drew 3,731,180 U.S. departures — 40.1% of all outbound trips, the single largest destination by far.
- Europe pulled in 1,636,773 American travelers, up 2.8% from March 2025 and accounting for 17.6% of total departures.
- Combined, Mexico and Canada captured 51% of the outbound market, leaving the remaining 49% headed overseas.
Mexico alone accounted for four in ten of those departures, cementing its position as the default getaway for U.S. travelers chasing proximity, favorable exchange rates, and short flight times. Add Canada to that tally and North America absorbed just over half of all outbound American trips in March, leaving the other 49 percent headed to genuinely overseas destinations.
Europe was the biggest beneficiary of that overseas half, pulling in more than 1.6 million American visitors and growing faster than the outbound total as a whole. A 2.8 percent year-over-year gain suggests the continent isn’t just holding steady as a bucket-list draw — it’s actively picking up share as Americans stretch their travel radius further from home.
The inbound side of the ledger tells a different story. Canada and Mexico together still supply the bulk of visitors to the U.S. — 1,533,003 and 1,527,879 arrivals respectively — and layering in the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany brings the total to 67.1 percent of all inbound arrivals. But even with those five countries doing the heavy lifting, total inbound volume is still recovering ground lost since the pandemic, while outbound volume cleared that bar more than a year ago and keeps climbing.
Read together, the two trendlines describe a one-way current: Americans are traveling internationally at a record clip, while the rest of the world’s return to visiting the U.S. is real but incomplete. For an industry that spent years treating post-pandemic “revenge travel” as a temporary sugar high, March’s numbers make the outbound side look less like a rebound and more like a new baseline.
