American Travelers in Europe & the Weak Dollar

[Hostels]

Recent story from USA Today that talks about how Americans are preferring to book trips to non-euro countries:
Summer Travelers Head to Caribbean, South America Instead of Spain, France

Excerpt:

Currency exchange rates across the 21-country European Union are prompting international travelers to look elsewhere this summer.

"More people are traveling internationally, but where they're going is different," says Amy Ziff of Travelocity, the online travel agency.

Summer bookings for countries where the euro is used such as Spain, France and Italy are 15% lower than last year, while bookings are up 16% for Eastern European countries that don't use the euro, she says.

[...]

The Caribbean's share of Travelocity's summer bookings is up 15%, the share for South America including hotspots such as Buenos Aires is up 13%, and Mexico's share is up 47%.

Mexico's tourism industry is increasing promotions and packages to capitalize on Americans' worry about the euro, says Oscar Fitch, director of Mexico Tourism Board.

Bookings for the first three months of the year are already 10% higher than this time last year, he says.

It is also predicted that more Americans will be traveling this year, including an increase in travelers to Western Europe:

Excerpt:

AURORA, Ill.--(Business Wire)--
In a first-ever summer forecast for foreign travel, AAA expects 25.1 million Americans will be traveling internationally this summer, an increase of 2.6 percent over the 24.5 million who were estimated to have traveled overseas in summer 2007. The report includes all travel outside of the United States, including Canada and Mexico.

[...]

China and India are expected to see the largest increases in travel from the U.S. this summer, with China expected to see a 13.4 percent increase (573,000 American travelers) and India up 13.1 percent (227,000 American travelers). Travel to Canada and Mexico this summer is expected to be similar to last year, with Canada expecting to see a slight drop of 0.8 percent (5 million American travelers) and Mexico likely increasing by 1.3 percent (5.8 million American travelers).

Many of the other destinations that are expected to see big increases this summer are in Europe. Travel from the U.S. to France is expected to be up 6.7 percent (1.1 million American travelers), Ireland up 6.6 percent (337,000 American travelers), Italy up 4.7 percent (1.6 million American travelers) and Germany up 4.4 percent (724,000 American travelers). These increases are consistent with AAA's own bookings, which show a 5 percent increase in tours to Europe.

Two contradicting articles. It looks like Travelocity's bookings for euro countries are down and AAA's bookings are up.

I wonder how hostels will do this summer from American visitors. The articles above are not about backpackers...
The dollar has dropped 7.5% in the past six months...