Is Trump deterring European tourists to US? Not so fast

Hindustan Times

3 days ago

President Donald Trump's hardline immigration tactics, sweeping tariffs and nationalist policies may be a turn-off for many would-be European tourists to the United States, but the data paints a more nuanced bigger picture.
The number of visitors to the United States from Western Europe in March fell by 17 percent from the same month a year earlier, but then picked up 12 percent in April, according to the US tourism office.
The German Travel Association said the number of Germans going to the United States dropped 28 percent in March, but then bounced back by 14 percent in April.
The association's spokesperson, Torsten Schaefer, said that Easter holidays fell later this year than in 2024, which might have impacted the figures.
"There're practically no requests in recent months to change or cancel reservations," Schaefer said. However, he noted "a rise in queries about entry requirements into the United States".
At the end of March, several European countries urged their nationals to review their travel documents for the United States, following several mediatised cases of Europeans being held on arrival then deported.
Anecdotally, there are signs of Europeans opting not to visit Trump's America.
"The country I knew no longer exists," said Raphael Gruber, a 60-year-old German doctor who has been taking his family to Cape Cod in Massachusetts every summer since 2018.
"Before, when you told the immigration officer you were there for whale-watching, that was a good reason to come. But now, they are afraid of everything that comes from outside," he told AFP.
Referring to invasive electronic checks at the US borders, he added: "I don't want to buy a 'burner' phone just to keep my privacy".
In Britain, Matt Reay, a 35-year-old history teacher from Northamptonshire, said he had scratched the United States off his list, preferring to go to South America, where his "money would probably be better spent".
"It feels like, to be honest, that there's a culture that's built in the US in the last kind of 12 months, where as a foreign visitor, I don't really feel like I'm that welcome anyway," he said.
Reay said he felt "insulted" by both Trump's tariffs on British exports to the United States and comments by Trump's vice president, JD Vance, about Britain as "a random country".
Trump's public belittling of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a White House visit in February was also "outrageous", he said.
According to the US tourism office, however, the number of British visitors to the United States in April rose 15 percent year-on-year, after a 14 percent drop in March.
Oxford Economics, an economics monitoring firm, attributed the March decline partly to the Easter dates this year, along with a stronger US dollar at the time that made the United States a more costly destination.
But it mainly pointed to "polarising rhetoric and policy actions by the Trump administration, as well as concerns around tighter border and immigration policies".
Didier Arino, head of the French travel consultancy Protourisme, said April traffic to the United States might have picked up because European airlines were offering discounted flights.
"You can find flights, especially for New York, at 600 euros ," he said.
In Germany, Muriel Wagner, 34, said she was not putting off a summer trip to Boston to see a friend at Harvard a US university in a legal and ideological struggle with Trump's administration.
"I've been asked if the political situation and trade war with the US has affected our trip," the PhD student said in Frankfurt.
But "you can't let yourself be intimidated", she said, adding that she was keen to discuss the tensions with Americans on their home turf.
Protourisme's Arino said that, as "the mood has sunk" regarding the United States, potential tourists were rethinking a visit.
On top of the "the financial outlay, being insulted by the US administration for being European, that really robs you of the desire" to go there, he said.
He estimated that the "Trump effect" would cut the number of French tourists going to the United States this year by a quarter.
A body representing much of the French travel sector, Entreprises du Voyage, said the number of French visitors to America dropped eight percent in March, and a further 12 percent in April. It estimated that summer departures to the United States would drop by 11 percent.
According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, covering major tourism operators, the US tourism sector already reeling from Canadians and Mexicans staying away could lose $12.5 billion in spending by foreign visitors this year.
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