No sign of ‘Trump slump’ in tourism
NEW YORK — Last winter, the U.S. tourism industry fretted that Trump administration policies might lead to a “Trump slump” in travel.
But those fears may have been premature. International arrivals and travel-related spending are up in 2017 compared with the same period in 2016.
There might even be a “Trump bump,” says Roger Dow, CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, a non-profit representing the travel industry.
A few months ago, Dow and others warned President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and ban on travel from a handful of mostly Muslim countries could send an anti-tourism message. But “impending doom hasn’t manifested itself,” Dow said in an interview. “Right now we cannot identify a loss. It’s contrary to everything we’ve heard, but travel is in slightly better shape than it was a year ago. Everyone wants me to tell the story of the sky is falling, but for the travel industry, the sky is not falling.”
Latest numbers from the U.S. Travel Association’s Travel Trends Index showed 6.6 per cent growth in international travel to the U.S. in April and five per cent growth in May compared with the same months last year. The Travel Trends Index uses hotel, airline and U.S. government data.
Individual sectors have good news, too. Hotel occupancy for the first five months of 2017 was “higher than it has ever been before,” said Jan Freitag, senior vice-president with STR, which tracks hotel industry data. American Express Meetings and Events has “not seen a slowdown in either domestic U.S. meetings or international meetings from the U.S. in the past six months,” according to senior vice-president Issa Jouaneh. Even New York’s National September 11 Memorial and Museum has more international visitors: 554,381 at the museum Jan. 1-July 11, up from 517,539 the same period last year.
Florida’s Orlando International Airport, a gateway for theme park visitors, reported growth for domestic and international passengers year to date, though Visit Orlando CEO George Aguel said it was “still premature to determine a specific impact” from Trump administration policies.
International trips are often planned months in advance, so decisions made this year about travel may not be evident yet.
“For us, we already planned before the election,” said Alban Michel, waiting with a group of Swiss tourists to see One World Trade’s observatory in New York on Monday.
Companies that track online behaviour say searches for U.S. travel are down. Yet tour companies that bring foreigners here are “not only holding year over year, but in many cases they’re having a record year,” according to Chris Thompson, CEO of Brand USA, which markets the U.S. to the world.