Americans Are Crazy About the Royal Wedding (According to Airbnb)
The royal wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is right around the corner, and it seems as though Americans are way more excited about the event than Britons.
Airbnb is expecting more than 42,000 guests to bed down in London between May 18 and May 20, according to a recent report.
Most of the bookings, the peer-to-peer accommodations platform noted, are being made by Americans, who are flooding the city in even greater numbers than out-of-town Brits. French, German and Australian tourists are also making pilgrimages to London for the royal fête.
And a recent YouGov poll indicated that as many as 66% of Brits "don't care that much" about Saturday's ceremony. Perhaps Brits just aren't as enamored with American-born Markle as they are with the Duchess of Cambridge. The Independent reported that the number of applications for celebratory street parties dropped by as much as 92% between the 2011 Royal Wedding and Saturday's jubilee.
Nonetheless, as many as 100,000 people are expected to crowd the processional routes, according to NBC News. Only 600 individuals, however, received invites to the wedding ceremony at St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle.
You don't have to redeem all of your British Airways Avios to experience the most exciting social event of the year. Watch Prince Harry and Meghan Markle say "I do" on a number of broadcast television stations and live streams.
Unfortunately, if you don't care all that much about the royal nuptials, there may not be much else to watch on television on Saturday.
Featured image by ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
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