The world has come up to a good number of economic challenges in recent years, most of which have been focused on the economic giant – the USA. Dollar has weakened significantly and the world economic situation has sunk into crisis leaving people frightened to spend money on so-called luxury items such as holidays or cars.

However, the tourism industry is not suffering as much as some would make out, if we take the exception of the airline companies, and people are still travelling. Admittedly, Americans are spending less of the green stuff on their travels yet the new situation has opened up a host of new challenges for the American tourism sector.

On the basis of a Travelhorizon’s survey conducted by Ypartnership and the U.S. Travel Association it was revealed that Americans in general plan to stay for fewer nights at the place of their destination when on a business or leisure trip. In fact, over half of the 2.270 American respondents that were surveyed said that they plan to cut the length of their trips.

This is clearly related to the hefty hotel rates in the USA. So the challenge now is clearly to make Americans stay longer. Getting them to travel and attracting them to places is apparently no problem. It is keeping the fish in the net, which seems to be the difficulty.

This is also linked to the fact that around 70% of those interviewed for the survey admitted that saving money is a primary aim when either taking a business trip or going on leisure break. If hotels and tourist resorts can manage to persuade people to stay longer, then the amount they spend would surely increase.