Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Travel Agency Revenue Benchmark

Travel agencies booking transport, accommodation and packages for travelers.

NAICS 561510, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Travel Agency Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

Two published totals produce the average below: what travel agencies with paid employees received in 2022, and how many establishments reported that revenue.

≈$3,480,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

9,285

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $32.3 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $32.3 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 9,285 employer establishments works out to $3,480,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.

Scope: Travel Agencies (NAICS 561510). Covers travel agencies with paid employees; tour operators and reservation services are separate categories. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.

Read this figure carefully. The category mixes leisure agencies, corporate travel managers and specialty planners whose income models differ sharply, so the high average paired with the very low payroll share is a reason to treat this as a category signal rather than a typical agency's take.

Leisure agencies and corporate travel managers are counted together although they are paid in completely different ways.

Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026

Where these figures come from
Establishment counts and combined receipts are published figures from the official source named in each figure's source line. BusinessNES divides one by the other and rounds to the nearest $10,000; no other adjustment is made. The full chain from published figure to this page is described on the methodology page.

Data Source Notice

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.

Employer Establishments at Year Five Endpoint only

Travel Arrangement and Reservation Services, NAICS 5615, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

48.1%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation, endpoints only: 48.1 percent at 5 years. 1,054 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 16.0 to 48.1 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count5 years: 48.1 percent of the starting count100.048.1Start5 years1,054 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 48 establishments aged five for every 100 that first reported paid employment in 2018. Census compares counts by age rather than following the same businesses, so read it as a broad continuation indicator for the industry group, not as a tracked survival rate.

Intermediate annual counts do not form a consistent survival curve, so they are not connected as a year-by-year trend. Results across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts ranged from 16.0 to 48.1 percent, so treat this as a directional benchmark rather than a precise forecast. This benchmark covers Travel Arrangement and Reservation Services, NAICS 5615, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for travel agencies on their own: they are 9,285 of the 15,966 employer establishments in that group, about 58 percent of it. How this is measured

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll covers agents and support staff, not the fares and accommodation booked through them.

Cost lineShare of receipts
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈19%

Payroll share of receipts, Travel Agencies, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 19.0 percent of every revenue dollar in this category goes to annual payroll. As the census defines it, payroll includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses; it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and owner compensation. Treat it as one verified anchor, not a full labor cost breakdown.

This is not total labor cost or profit margin.

How to read this number
Payroll here is the census annual payroll figure, PAYANN: it includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses paid to employees, and it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and proprietor compensation. BusinessNES divides it by the same category total receipts, RCPTOT, and rounds to a whole percent.

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Sources and Methodology

Every figure on this page is bound to a published source, and each figure's own source line names that source precisely: the 2022 Economic Census for counts, receipts and payroll, and the Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics for the industry continuation benchmark. Where a page shows a sector survival curve instead, that series comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

BusinessNES performs the arithmetic on those published figures and nothing else. Receipts are divided by establishments, and payroll by receipts. The age-five establishment count is divided by the age-zero establishment count for the same four-digit industry group, then repeated across five age-zero cohorts to give a reference and a range. This category's share of its industry group comes from the same published tables. Every one of them is recomputed from the sealed source files at each release and blocks publication if it does not match. Results are rounded and marked approximate. The reference year is 2022 for revenue and payroll; treat every figure as a baseline, not today's market.

Category scope matters: these figures cover Travel Agencies (NAICS 561510), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Tour operators and reservation services have their own Census categories.

Full method, sources and limits
The methodology page describes the full chain for every figure on this site: the published source, the sealed snapshot it was read from, the exact calculation if BusinessNES performed one, and the honest limits of scope and vintage. Read the methodology.

Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.