US Tourism Takes Hit as Overseas Travelers Avoid Country

“There used to be thousands of people from Canada. They would give me Canadian dollars and I would change it at the bank,” Omar Tallat, 35, who runs a corn dog stand near Times Square, told The Wall Street Journal in a report Sunday (June 1). 

“This year,” Tallat added, “business is very bad.”

The report, citing U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, said that a little under 2 million foreigners arrived at the U.S.’s main airports in the last four weeks, down 6% from the same period in 2024.

Meanwhile, flight bookings to the U.S. from Europe have declined about 12% through August, WSJ said, citing an analysis of online travel-agency booking data from Cirium.

According to the report, travelers from overseas say they are canceling trips to the U.S. in favor of visits to Europe or vacations closer to home. Some say this is because of the White House’s immigration crackdown and reports of foreign visitors to the U.S. being detained or deported.

Others want to show their frustration with the administration’s policies, similar to the consumers in Canada who have shunned American-made products, or the Europeans who have boycotted Teslas due to the company’s CEO, Trump-aligned Elon Musk.

“There’s not a lot politically I can do, but what I can do is not spend my money in the U.S.,” said Marc Toews, a Canadian long-haul truck driver who has canceled a road trip to places like Chicago and New York City.

The report noted that travel and tourism account for roughly 3% of American gross domestic product, and overseas visitors only contribute a tiny portion of that, meaning that a pullback would have just a slight impact on broader economic activity.

However, some areas could be hit hard, like towns along the Canadian border or in Maine, as well as the beach towns of the Jersey Shore and other Atlantic coast areas.

And the tourism sector is dominated by smaller businesses, which have a tougher time weathering swings in demand, said Aran Ryan, director of industry studies at Tourism Economics.

This is at a time when 20% of small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) worry they will not survive the next five years because of U.S. tariffs, according to PYMNTS Intelligence research.

“For SMBs, tariffs aren’t just a line item; they’re an existential threat,” PYMNTS wrote in April. “Prices for goods and services climbed to their steepest rate in over a year this month, with tariffs fueling an especially sharp increase in prices of manufactured goods. SMBs account for around one-third of total imports to the United States.”