Student loan payments are back. For many, that means the golden era of splashy vacations and nonstop travel is over.

With student loans resuming, some people are left wondering how they’ll afford to travel. Boris Zhitkov

• Until last month, some student loan borrowers were in the midst of a travel heyday.
• Pandemic regulations had loosened, borders had widely reopened, and repayments were still frozen. 
• Some people were traveling more than ever — until payments resumed in October. Then reality sunk in.

For people with a travel bug, the months between spring 2021 and October 2023 posed an unprecedented opportunity.

It was a perfect storm: Student loan payments were on hold, frozen without interest, thanks to the Covid-19 outbreak the year prior. Many shifted to a hybrid schedule or could work entirely remotely. Pandemic restrictions were loosening up nationwide, and countries like France and England officially reopened their borders to tourists.

Many borrowers had more freedom than ever — and hundreds of extra dollars burning a hole in their pockets — so some funneled their newfound independence and extra cash into travel.

But with the resumption of student loan payments in October, travelers’ budgets are tightening — and the pandemic-era dream of freewheeling revenge travel is crashing back down to earth.

Payments will affect how borrowers travel

A recent survey by travel company Going, shared with Business Insider, found that 21% of respondents said they had student loans. Of those, about two-thirds — 63% — said monthly payments would affect how they travel.

According to the personal finance website Bankrate, 28% of Gen Zers have student loan debt, compared with 43% of millennials. Twenty-one percent of Gen X has student loans, per the site. The average student loan debt is about $29,000 — and the American population owes $1.75 trillion in student debt, according to Forbes.

Katy Nastro, one of Going’s travel experts, said that while many travelers enjoyed high-budget international trips between 2021 and the start of 2023, many will begin to rethink what travel looks like for them in the coming months.

“Moving forward into next year, a good portion of people who might’ve looked to take the same amount of trips that they did this year are now going to say, ‘Well, maybe it’s not really in the budget anymore,'” Nastro said. “They’re probably going to look at what type of travel they want to do this year and then have to make some adjustments.”

Of the student loan borrowers surveyed by Going, 38% said they’d have to be more budget-conscious during any upcoming trips, and 17% said they’d have to take fewer trips than they used to.

Which takes priority: loans or travel?

Throughout the pandemic, 25-year-old Katie Simony flew between her home in Colorado and her boyfriend’s home in Minnesota at least once a month, if not every two weeks.

Beyond commuting between states, Simony told BI she and her boyfriend would regularly take weekend trips, and she even swung a trip to France in 2022. By June last year, she said she had already used most of her PTO days.

Katie Simony in Paris. Courtesy of Katie Simony

However, that travel heyday is essentially over for Simony, who attended Grand Canyon University in Phoenix for two years starting in 2016. Now, she pays about $350 monthly in loans.

Simony said she didn’t graduate from the university, making it all the more bitter to repay the loans.

“I’m paying all this money back for something I’m not even using,” she said. “It just feels like a huge, giant waste.”

“You get used to not having to make those payments for a few years,” Simony continued. “And then, to have to put them back in your budget, it feels like you almost have to make the decision, ‘Do I want to make my loan payment this month, or do I want to go home and see my family?'”

In the coming months, we’ll see a ‘renormalization’ of travel, experts say

For the past few summers, it may have felt like everyone you know was in Europe. In many ways, that was kind of true, Nastro told BI. People were tired of being cooped up, had money to spare, and began focusing on splashy international vacations.

“They got their big-ticket trips out of the way,” Nastro said. “Maybe they took one or two extra trips in the last 15 months because they hadn’t been able to do so in a while due to the pandemic restrictions.”

One student loan borrower, 24-year-old Megan Rose, had that kind of year in 2022, visiting southern France and Seoul, South Korea. She bought her roughly $700 ticket to France two weeks beforehand after a friend asked if she could help housesit for a family member.

That kind of last-minute, high-cost travel isn’t in the cards these days, Rose said, in part due to her student loans. She also said that working two jobs has tightened her schedule, making it harder to pack up and go.

Still, that budget change aligns with what Nastro envisions for the future of student loan borrowers’ travel.

“I think this year we’re going to see a more clear renormalization of travel,” she said — meaning people will likely turn to domestic travel in 2024, as well as lean on cheaper destinations to get their travel fix.

“It’s a shame,” Nastro said, “that student loan payments, for a notable amount of people, impact how they live their life.”