Travel's Wallet Share Reckoning Is Here This is a preview of my new bi-weekly newsletter. Sign up for free today. -- The U.S. travel industry has a preferred narrative for 2026: "resilience" (a wildly overused word). And yes, TSA keeps setting records, airlines are still flying full planes, and demand remains robust. But three independent signals from U.S. credit card issuers point to the same pressure: Travel is losing wallet share. The Data Convergence Citizens Bank published its December credit-card tracker last week. The headline finding is that travel's share of consumer wallets shrank from 12% in January 2024 to 8% by December 2025. That's a loss of four percentage points in travel's wallet share in just two years. Travel spending is still growing, but at a much slower pace than overall spending: 4% versus 8.1%. When you're growing at half the rate of everything else, you're losing ground. Wallet share is a zero-sum game — every percentage point travel loses goes somewhere else. The beneficiaries are visible in the data. Grocery climbed to 17% of wallet, restaurants held at 9-10%, and services remained steady. Consumers are spending freely, just disproportionately less on travel. Citizens Bank's footprint is concentrated in the Northeast, and consumers elsewhere, say the Sun Belt, could tell a different story. But Bank of America's recent report, "Inside Consumers' Wallets," offers partial corroboration. BofA's broader "transportation" category — which bundles travel with gas and vehicle payments — fell four basis points year-over-year, though easing gas prices likely explain part of that decline. A clearer signal in the data comes from BofA's income breakdown: Lower- and middle-income households have pulled back on airlines and hotels, while households earning more than $150,000 have increased their share of spending in those categories. The slowdown isn't uniform — it's K-shaped. Citigroup's Q1 2025 earnings call added a third confirmation. "We've seen a shift towards essentials and away from travel and entertainment," CFO Mark Mason told analysts. Three data sets, somewhat different methodologies, directionally consistent findings. The End of the Revenge Cycle The revenge travel thesis held up well for nearly four years. The conventional wisdom was that a reprioritization of experiences over things would permanently expand travel's share of consumer spending. But the thesis missed something fundamental: revenge is temporary. You get it, and then move on. The wallet share data suggests consumers have returned to normal. They haven't abandoned travel, but they've returned it to its historical place in the spending hierarchy of needs and wants. The binge is over. The Operating Question for 2026 Wallet share measures what consumers choose to buy when they have options. By that measure, travel is losing priority. Not catastrophically, not irreversibly, but meaningfully. Consumers may still be spending on travel, but this kind of normalization is its own kind of problem for an industry that priced itself, staffed itself, and invested itself for a permanently elevated baseline. The industry spent the growth years in positive-sum mode. Rising demand lifted most participants. Wallet share compression flips the dynamic. The fight for that 8% becomes zero-sum. OTAs, airlines, hotels, cruise lines, experience platforms — everyone is now competing for a slice that isn't expanding. The companies that grow through this environment will be the ones that figure out how to expand travel's share of wallet rather than just compete for the existing share. That's a different strategic problem than most travel companies have been solving. Loyalty programs need to function as wallet share engines, not point accumulators. Experiences need to create frequency and habit, not occasional high-dollar splurges. Embedded finance and subscriptions need to convert travel into a consistent part of a customer's budget. The question for 2026 is now clear: Who can grow travel's share of wallet, quarter after quarter? -- Rafat Ali Founder & CEO Skift P.S. This is first of three columns from me in a series based on full-year 2025 credit card data spend and what it deciphers for what's happening in travel spending. | 
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