The counting of the U.S.’s inbound travel 2017 won’t be disclosed until the mid of 2018. However, if those figures follow the trend of the first half of this year, they won’t be good. The initial six months of this year in terms of the number of international visitors visiting the U.S. dropped considerably to 4 percent in comparison to H1 2016, as per the data published this week from the U.S. Department of Commerce National Travel and Tourism Office.
A calculated 33.8 million non-resident international travelers in total pouring into the U.S. between the months of January and June 2017, a 3.9-percent decrease was noticed from the same time last year, the NTTO said. The drop was quite higher in the month of June 2017 alone than for the six-month period which accounted a 6.7 percent drop in comparison to June last year.
The slump suggests that Donald Trump’s anti-foreigner and immigration policies at the early part of this year had the possibility to cause a drop in tourism here. The words of warning seem to have been prophetic: Canada was the only country in the world to have sent greater number of visitors to the U.S. in the first six months of this year in comparison to 2016 which was up by 5 percent.
Few countries that received often criticism by the president witnessed notable declines. For example, the Middle East – the number of visitors from this part dropped nearly 30 percent in comparison to the first six months of last year. In June, Mexican visitors dropped 16 percent alone compared to the previous June, and 9.4 percent compared to the first half of 2016.
