The U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office announced that in 2017 international visitors spend more in January and February than ever before. According to the statistics, international visitors are opening their wallets wider than ever before. Indeed, international visitors are injecting, on average, nearly $715 million a day into the U.S. economy and supporting nearly 1.2 million American jobs.
International visitors spent $21.1 billion in January and $21.0 billion in February on travel to, and tourism-related activities within, the United States setting a new record for U.S. travel and tourism exports. Year-to-date tourism exports totaled a record-setting $42.1 billion for the first two months of 2017, an increase of nearly 3 percent (nearly $1.1 billion) when compared to the same period last year.
Travel Receipts: Purchases of travel and tourism-related goods and services by international visitors traveling in the United States totaled $13.1 billion during February, an increase of nearly 2 percent when compared to February 2016. These goods and services include food, lodging, recreation, gifts, entertainment, local transportation in the United States, and other items incidental to foreign travel. Travel receipts accounted for 62 percent of total U.S. travel and tourism exports in February.
Passenger Fare Receipts: Fares received by U.S. carriers from international visitors totaled $3.3 billion for the month, absolutely unchanged when compared to February 2016. Passenger fare receipts accounted for 16 percent of total U.S. travel and tourism exports in February.
Medical/Education/Short-Term Worker (1) : Expenditures for educational and health-related tourism, along with all expenditures by border, seasonal, and other short-term workers, totaled nearly $4.7 billion in February, an appreciable increase of nearly 10 percent when compared to the same period in the previous year. Medical tourism, education, and short-term worker receipts accounted for 22 percent of total U.S. travel and tourism exports in February.
(1) In June 2014 the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) completed the most comprehensive restructuring of the U.S. international economic accounts since 1976 in an effort to bring our international accounts into closer conformity with international guidelines. As a result, BEA now uses a broader definition of travel that includes education-related and health-related travel and expenditures on goods and services by border, seasonal, and other short-term workers. Therefore, all travel and tourism-related trade data have been revised back to 1999.
