National Post (National Edition)
‘BIG CHILL’
THE U.S. TRAVEL INDUSTRY IS VOICING A COMMON REFRAIN: PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP IS SCARING AWAY VISITORS.
NEW YORK • The U.S. travel industry is voicing a common refrain: President Donald Trump’s travel ban, terror attacks in Europe and a laptop ban represent a recipe for a potential sharp decline in visitors to and from the United States.
“When you hear words like ‘travel ban,’ it puts a big chill” on travel and tourism, James Murren, chairman and chief executive of MGM Resorts, said at an industry conference last week in New York.
Some data is backing up those concerns. Nearly 20 per cent fewer people are visiting this summer from the Middle East, the focus of Trump’s travel ban, even though the policy has been blocked by U.S. courts. As of early June, overall advance airline bookings to the United States were down 3.4 per cent for this year’s summer travel season compared with the same time last year, according to ForwardKeys, a Spanish company that tracks air travel.
And NYC & Co., New York City’s tourism marketing agency, said in early June that it expected a 2.4 per cent decline this year in international visitors to the city, the top tourist destination for people visiting the United States.
But so far, the worst fears have not been realized.
In June, the U.S. Travel Association predicted only a slight fall in the number of people visiting the United States this year. The number of international passengers at airports serving Orlando, San Francisco and Las Vegas, three of the country’s top tourism hubs, rose in the early part of 2017. And travellers from North America using Heathrow Airport in London, as well as Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports in Paris, were also up, according to traffic counts from those airports.
Investors do not seem spooked, either.
Shares in Wyndham Worldwide, the hotel company, are near their highest ever, as are shares of Marriott International, which merged last year with Starwood Hotels. A Bloomberg index of stocks for airlines based in the United States has risen 6.5 per cent since the start of the year. Shares in United Airlines, which faced major public relations problems after the rough treatment of a passenger in April, are up 6.3 per cent since the start of 2017.
Scott Kirby, president of United Airlines, was asked at a recent conference if the terrorist attacks in Britain had had any impact on demand for flights to that country. The short answer, he said, was no. “They’re terrible, that these events happen,” Kirby said. “And in a way, even worse is that they’re happening with such regularity that there isn’t much impact, that people are almost becoming numb, perhaps.”
Even in the last two weeks, as London faced a new attack and Trump took to Twitter to repeat his support of a travel ban, there have been few hints that travellers are throwing out their plans. Major U.S. carriers plan to increase seat capacity on international routes in the last four months of the year, according to airline analysts at Wolfe Research.
“I’ve not seen that hard pullback that I think some might have anticipated,” said Chris Jones, chief marketing officer at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.
Last week at Kennedy International Airport in New York, the nation’s busiest destination for international passengers, several travellers expressed resolve.
Augustina Spina, who lives in Manhattan, was lingering outside Terminal 7 with a friend before an evening flight to London. She said she gave no thought to rearranging her plans after the recent terrorist attacks.
“I live in the city,” said Spina, 59.
“It can happen anywhere. I absolutely love London.”
Dirk Siemon, 49, was on his way home to Berlin after a five-day trip to New York with his wife and son. He said he was “a little bit frightened there would be problems coming in,” but said his family encountered no difficulties.
The travel industry has expressed concern about Trump’s focus on travellers from the Middle East. In addition to the president’s executive orders, now blocked by the courts, the administration has banned electronic devices larger than a cellphone in the cabins of direct, inbound flights from airports in 10 Muslimmajority countries over fears that they could be used to conceal bombs.
Emirates Airlines has attributed some fallout to Trump’s actions. The carrier, which had been aggressively expanding its high-end service to the United States, announced plans to reduce the number of flights to five U.S. cities after it saw a “significant deterioration” in bookings.