Quote:
Originally Posted by suburbanite
One of the primary reasons for this could be the fact that you can live in the U.S. and be hundreds of miles away from either Mexico or Canada. Whereas in Canada 75% of people live within 161 km of the U.S. border. Add to that the fact that there are more reasons for Canadians to travel to the States than vice versa, and the numbers don't seem so skewed. There is enough space as well as physical and urban diversity in the States to satisfy most people's travel needs.
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This is true.
Passports themselves aren't cheap - $135 for an adult. And as a passport is not our primary form of identification (those are issued by states, not the federal government), you don't pay for a passport unless you're planning specifically to travel internationally.
For me, living in Colorado, you're looking at a very expensive flight, or a really long drive, to get to anywhere that you'd need a passport. Numbers of passport holders have gone up significantly since passports started being required for Mexico travel. That's the cheapest way to travel internationally from here, but it's still a $500 flight. To anywhere else, it's $1,000 and up. So international travel is inherently a luxury for the well-to-do, or at least upper middle class.
In my house we try and do one domestic trip and one international trip each year. But that really strains the vacation time and the budget, and we're not exactly poor. One international trip per year is next to impossible for most Americans, and even then, you'd be passing up on a lot of other neat and cheaper options domestically (the classic road trip to Yellowstone, for example).
Another example... I try and squeeze in a short dive trip each year too, but sometimes it's just as easy to go to Florida or Hawaii as it is to go to Mexico or Belize. I do all of the above, of course. But if you're looking at statistics... a diving enthusiast in Canada is doing all his SCUBA travel internationally. Same for most Europeans. Half of mine is domestic simply because... well... the U.S. is huge.