Fears that President Trump’s travel bans and anti-immigrant rhetoric would scare off international travelers appear to be unwarranted, or so the latest visitor numbers show.
Far from the “Trump slump” scenario that scared experts a few months ago, they’re now talking about a possible “Trump bump”.
The U.S. Travel Association’s Travel Trends Index?a calculation based on hotel, airline and federal government data?showed 6.6 percent growth in international travel to the U.S. in April and 5 percent growth in May compared with the same months last year.
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, a senior vice president with STR, which tracks hotel industry data.
“Impending doom hasn’t manifested itself,” said Roger Dow, chief executive of the U.S. Travel Association. “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.”
Las Vegas is sharing in the increase, with international arrivals over the first five months up 1.2 percent over the same period last year, the equivalent of 1.4 million more visitors, thanks mostly to increased traffic on Air Canada, Korean Air, discount carriers Edelweiss and Thomas Cook and China’s Hainan Airlines, which launched weekly non-stop service to the gambling capital at the end of 2016.
