This holiday season, U.S. travelers are filling their wish lists with European adventures, be they riding reindeer sleighs to Santa’s Arctic grotto, skiing Alpine slopes or sipping hot gluhwein at a twinkling Christmas market in Austria.

Instead of splashing out on souvenir shopping, this year they’re more likely to prioritize bucket-list experiences and take advantage of the relative strength of the U.S. dollar to splurge on dinners and excursions, says Eduardo Santander, chief executive of the European Travel Commission, a nonprofit that promotes European travel destinations.

In general, long stays in capital cities such as Paris, London and Rome are out and “coolcations” — less-trodden locales where the temperatures run lower —are hot as more intrepid travelers hop on trains and planes to explore less-visited (and more affordable) destinations such as Latvia and Bulgaria.

“I compare tourism sometimes to a supermarket,” says Santander, who spoke to the Mastercard Newsroom following the recent inaugural Skift Transatlantic Summit, a forum that brought together leaders from across the tourism ecosystem at Mastercard’s New York City Tech Hub. “We should put the junk food a little bit further away from people and start filling the shelf full of responsible, regenerative travel options that give people a better sense of value for their dollars.”

Santander: From the U.S. to Europe, demand has increased by double digits and so has capacity. Where we see a little bit of a challenge is obviously with the other way around. We see planes coming to Europe very full but returning only half full, obviously that has a little bit of a geopolitical explanation. For the time being, it doesn't seem to be a big problem as the trans-Atlantic corridor is still very well covered by business travel. 

Santander: Christmas is still a very, very high season for Americans. Obviously winter and Northern Europe marry pretty well. There's a lot of snowy destinations but also all the Christmas traditions. We see more and more American people going to ski in Europe. The good exchange rate is making ski trips more affordable. We’re talking about Switzerland; we’re talking about Northern Italy and newcomers like the Pyrenees in Andorra. Bulgaria and Slovakia also have a very good ski offers. In the past, you would see a lot of Americans going to major ski resorts, but now they go to very niche, small, family-owned businesses.

Santander: Americans seem to be traveling to lesser-known destinations. If we focus on the previous summer, it was Southern Europe with Portugal, Italy and Turkey seeing double-digit increases from U.S. visitors. Demand is spreading for new up-and-coming destinations such as Cyprus, Latvia and Estonia. This is very good for Europe. We are trying to fight seasonality and trying to also to spread the flows all year long and all over the geography of Europe.

Santander: Data is not only essential for tourism for the Europe of the future, it’s existential for right now. [Tourism businesses] don’t only need to know how many people are in their place – they want to know what those people are doing, where they are coming from, where they are spending their money, waht they are thinking about their experience. AI is going to probably create a revolution in consumption and travel around the world, not only in Europe. We hope that the industry will adapt quickly enough.

Santander: Our key markets are the U.S. and Canada. Asia is finally leading a long-haul recovery. We see travel demand finally picking up from Japan, we see a lot of travel demand from Southeast Asia and last, but not least, the big tourism giant is China. For the Indian subcontinent, the outlook remains very positive. If visas get facilitated in the years to come, we’ll definitely see a boom in Asian travelers coming to Europe.