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 association’s spokesperson, Torsten Schaefer, said that Easter holidays fell later this year than in 2024, which might have impacted the figures.
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.
“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.
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”.
“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.
Trump’s public belittling of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a White House visit in February was also “outrageous”, he said.
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.
- Cheaper flights -
“You can find flights, especially for New York, at 600 euros ($680),“ he said.
“I’ve been asked if the political situation and trade war with the US has affected our trip,“ the PhD student said in Frankfurt.
Protourisme’s Arino said that, as “the mood has sunk” regarding the United States, potential tourists were rethinking a visit.
He 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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