The recent recession and its related debt crisis have exerted a profound impact on the daily life of people and expenditure behaviours. Focusing on tourism expenditure – a well-known luxury good – the present paper explores how the response to the crisis changes across households. Using Italian Households Budget Survey data over the period 1997-2013, a Hurdle model in a life-cycle context is specified to compare the consumption behaviour in the pre- and post-crisis time and develop different micro and macro measures of resilience. Cohort profiles for participation in and for consumption of tourism services in the pre- and post-crisis time are determined for exploring the households’ resilience by generation and demographic characteristics. As for the macro-resilience, combining a wealth of micro data, an overall expenditure elasticity is calculated to examine how Italian households have responded to the recent economic crisis. Our analysis reveals that the crisis has strongly influenced the decision to participate in and to consume tourism services among all generations, irrespective of the destination choice. However, households making domestic trips appear to be less crisis-resistant than those who travel abroad. Finally, the analysis shows the dynamic effect of the economic crisis on tourism expenditures.