January 2025
Luxury is back in fashion?
Luxury spending’s decline over the past two years could be reversing, with notable growth in high-end hotels and shopping abroad.
Key takeaways
- Bank of America aggregated credit and debit card data shows luxury spending has been declining in the U.S. for 10 quarters year-over-year (YoY). However, it appears luxury spending has finally started to improve and there are signs of early green shoots heading into 2025.
- To date, when U.S. consumers do spend on luxury, they appear to have been doing so increasingly abroad. Bank of America brick-and-mortar card data shows 13% of luxury spending was outside of the U.S. in 2024 — up compared to both 2023 and 2019. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this trend was particularly notable among the top 5% of households by income, with 10.5% growth YoY.
- Consumers have also been foregoing luxury goods spending in favor of luxury services. Spending on high-end hotels has outpaced luxury retail spending across all generations, though with older generations outperforming younger cohorts.
Read our full analysis for a more in-depth look at these trends.
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