US Tourism:
Making America Unwelcoming? Mar/Apr 2025

Preliminary data from UN Tourism suggests that the world’s international tourist volumes in 2024 had almost recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Its data suggests there were 1,445m international tourist arrivals world-wide last year, 11% higher than in 2023, compared with 1,465m in 2019. International tourist receipts it estimates reached US$1.6tn, 4% higher than in 2019.

The USA features as the third largest country ranked by inbound tourists (behind France and Spain — see table). In 2024 the numbers of visitors rose by 9% year-on-year to 72.4m. The USA also ranks as the largest country in the world for tourism exports with tourist receipts last year of $215bn — and it maintained a healthy trade balance of $37bn in the sector.

This increase in visitor numbers was not quite a recovery to prepandemic levels, being still some 9% below the numbers for 2019, but there were expectations that this milestone would be achieved in 2025.

Canada is the largest source of tourist arrivals to the US accounting for 28% of the total in 2024: just over half of the 20m Canadian tourists come by surface transport, the remainder by air. Mexico accounted for 24% of the total at 17m tourists, only 20% of whom fly. The ITA categorises all other foreign visitors as “overseas”. The next largest source origin of tourists is the UK at 6% of the total, while visitors from Western Europe as a whole account for 18% of the total.

The year started on trend with international arrivals up by 5% year over year in January. But then preliminary figures from the governmental International Trade Administration (ITA) for February and March showed overseas visitors down by 2% and 12% respectively. There were some dramatic declines in some of the more important source areas in March. Tourist arrivals by air from Canada and Mexico fell by 13.5% and 22.9% respectively. Visitors from Western Europe, the next largest source, were down by 17% (and within that, visitors from Germany down by 28%). The preliminary numbers from the ITA exclude visitors arriving by land across the northern and southern borders (the ITA ironically relies on information from Canadian and Mexican governments for the data), but figures from Statistics Canada suggest that Canadian residents’ trips by car returning from the USA fell by 23% and 32% year on year in February and March respectively.

The press on both sides of the Atlantic have been quick to suggest that the primary cause behind these disappointing numbers is the Trump Administration’s aggressive immigration and trade policies.

The Canadian figures may well have something to do with Trump’s imposition of tariffs as much as his suggestion that the USA should annex Canada as the Federation’s 51st state. Polls suggest that Canadians overwhelmingly oppose the idea, with only 10% in favour (even in Alberta), and there was a splurge of anti-American reaction — including removing American produce from supermarket shelves, and selling Canadianos rather than Americanos in coffee shops. Interestingly, polls south of the 49th parallel suggest that 60-70% of Americans are also against the idea of annexation. Ironically, this spat had the unintended consequences of pushing the Liberals back into power under Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Equally, the decline in European visitors has in part been attributed to a more aggressive approach to border controls. Headline-grabbing reports of tourists being denied entry, strip-searched and detained in prison facilities, do not necessarily suggest there is any change in immigration policy, but do not help in promoting the US as an attractive tourist destination.

But they have also led to travel advisory statements from various European governments warning their citizens that they may be liable to arrest or detention should they not adhere to the USA’s strict entry rules.

There have also been news reports of visitors being turned away at the border because of data held on personal devices. In March, a French scientist was reportedly denied entry to the US on his way to a conference in Houston after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had supposedly expressed criticism of the Trump Administration. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in FY 2024 scanned 47,000 devices and says that “less than 0.01% of arriving international travelers encountered by CBP at a port of entry had their electronic devices searched” — and there is little to show that this rate of investigation has changed.

Tourism Basics

These scare stories ignore some of the basic economics of tourism. For someone planning to go on holiday, the prime considerations are:

• can I afford a holiday?
• when is it practible to go?
• where can I afford to go?
• how long can I afford to be away?

Generally, a long-haul trip will be booked well in advance.

This year the Easter festival (on April 20th), and spring school holidays, were nearly a month later than they were in 2024. So, for many, it would not have been practible to book a family holiday to the US in March.

Since September, the US dollar index (reflecting the exchange rate against a basket of currencies) strengthened by 10% reaching a peak in January (a week before Trump’s inauguration) at 110, the highest level in three years. So in the crucial period leading up to the end of the year, when travellers might have decided to book a holiday in the US in March, the destination cost could have seemed to have been much higher than expected. For those who had the time available to take a holiday, other destinations could well have appeared more attractively affordable.

Canadian citizens’ apparent reticence to visit the US may be an understandable reaction to Trump’s idea of buying their country. But the year on year comparisons of Canadian tourist arrivals by air had fallen in each month since September 2023. Some reason behind that may have been increases in air fares, but it could as equally be because in 2022 and 2023 there was a strong recovery from the pandemic: the numbers of Canadian visitors increased eight-fold from the nadir of 2021.

The strength of the dollar up to February, in contrast, helps to explain comments from the major US network carriers that weakness in bookings from Western Europe has been more than offset by increases in US originating transAtlantic bookings.

However, since then the dollar has fallen by 10%, and the converse of the economic pressures on tourism may now come into play.

Recent comments from Virgin Atlantic, for example, suggest a slowdown in bookings for the Summer from the US to the UK, while bookings from the UK to the US “remain strong” (Sterling has strengthened 10% against the dollar since January). A recent article in The Telegraph stated: “From the front lines of the global travel industry, airlines and package tour operators are reporting a surprise fillip in US travel from British tourists.”

The US is an attractive and welcoming tourist destination. The most popular destinations for foreign visitors are New York (29% share of visitors in 2023), Florida (25%) and California (20%), with Nevada, Texas and Hawaii a little way behind (at 7%, 6% and 5% shares respectively). The country is vast, and offers superlative iconic attractions from Central Park to the Golden Gate Bridge, Washington Monument, and the family-holiday favourite of DisneyLand. Maybe this year will turn out to be a blip.