'The country I know no longer exists': Are German tourists shunning the US?
The German Travel Association (DRV) recently revealed that the number of Germans going to the United States dropped by 28 percent in March, but then bounced back by 14 percent in April.
Torsten Schaefer, a spokesperson for the association, said that the figures might have been affected by Easter falling later this year than in 2024.
'We've had practically no requests in recent months to change or cancel reservations,' observed Schaefer, although he added that there has been 'a rise in queries about entry requirements into the United States'.
At the end of March, Germany was one of several European countries which urged their citizens to review their travel documents for the United States, following several widely publicised cases of Europeans being held on arrival and then deported.
Anecdotally, there are signs of Germans choosing 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.
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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'.
Muriel Wagner – currently planning a trip to visit a friend at Harvard – takes a different view. 'I've been asked if the political situation and trade war with the US has affected our trip,' said the 34-year-old PhD student said in Frankfurt.
'You can't let yourself be intimidated", she said, adding that she was keen to discuss the tensions with Americans on their home turf.
Similar conversations are taking place in other countries around Europe.
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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".
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.
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.
Didier Arino, head of the French travel consultancy Protourisme, estimated that the "Trump effect" would cut the number of French tourists going to the United States this year by a quarter.
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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