A drop in visits to U.S. spurs action

With international visitation to the U.S. on the decline, travel industry leaders say they plan to form a coalition of American businesses, called “Visit USA,” to send the message that the country welcomes foreign tourists.

In the first six months of 2017, the number of visitors to the U.S. dropped 4% to 41 million compared with the same period in 2016, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office. It marks a change of direction for visitation numbers, which had been surging for a few years.

Travel leaders have placed part of the blame for the decline on Donald Trump, who launched his presidential campaign by criticizing immigrants from Mexico and later pushed for a ban on travel from several largely Muslim countries.

Other experts attribute the slowdown to the strength of the U.S. dollar compared with many foreign currencies and new security measures on air travel to the U.S.

International travelers generated $246 billion in spending in 2016, according to the U.S. Travel Assn., the trade group for the nation’s travel industry. About half of all foreign visitors to the U.S. come from Mexico and Canada, with the rest coming from Europe, Japan, China and Brazil, among other countries.

Jonathan Grella, executive vice president of public affairs for the U.S. Travel Assn., said the declining visitor numbers are an “undeniable wake-up call that we must turn this into a national priority.”

He declined to blame Trump’s anti-immigration diatribes for the decline but said “a very big portion of the coalition’s work is to promote more balanced rhetoric.”

“We want to get to the place that the administration says we are closed for terrorism but open for business,” Grella said.

A representative for the White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.