This is something I've thought about before. European friends I've met put a lot more thought into destination "discovery" than Americans do. From my own observation, Americans just want to go to places they've been to before(for example that yearly trip to Cancun or Miami) or to a place that theyve been invited to for a specific purpose ("my friend's wedding in Vegas"). In those cases most of the planning is already decided for you, and you only think of where you'll stay and what you'll do when you get there. Only a very small set of would-be nomads or people on backpacking trips seem to be interested in frequently planning new place discovery.

Before Covid though I did start to see more aspirational trip planning come up in casual conversations based on places they'd seen on social media. For example in the years before covid Bali was really well known among Europeans, but wasnt on many Americans' radar until they started seeing instagrammars photographing beautiful locations. Most talks were of the "would be nice" variety. These are my own anecdotes from talking to people of course, the only evidence I can think of is that there were no direct flights from mainland America to Indonesia like there were for Thailand, Australia, and Singapore. I wonder if there's a way for a social media savvy would-be trip planning startup to target people who follow and interact with travel "influencers" with messaging like "here's how you can make it to X, on $50/daily spend, within a time constraint of 2-3 weeks" I personally was inspired by a guest blog post on Tim Ferriss site many years ago.

https://tim.blog/2013/08/05/cheap-travel-in-paris-new-york-h...

Note: Im thinking in 2019 or 202X post-pandemic terms. Covid is a whole new level of trip planning complexity and ethics that merits its own discussion. You definitely cant go to Bali as a tourist at all right now.