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Trump travel ban and tourism: What it means for Australians visiting the US
By Anthony Dennis
Comment
It's one of the lesser known, though rapidly growing, consequences of the Trump effect. In his now collective presidential bans on travellers from selected majority Muslim nations, Donald Trump may have seriously undermined the very industry on which he largely built the foundations of his hard-won (and lost and won again) billions.
Even if the ban is again overturned by the courts, the brand and practical damage to the US as one of the world's most attractive tourism destinations appears to be already substantial and mounting with the tourism industry's projected forecast worth of $US2.5 ($A3.3) trillion by 2025 seeming unlikely.
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers check passenger's identification at a security checkpoint at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC.Credit: Bloomberg
The Chicago Tribune reported today that the new President's stances on immigration have begun to "discourage foreign visits to major US cities, threatening to cost billions of dollars and thousands of jobs."
New York - among the most popular US destinations for the million or so Australians who visit the States annually - has already experienced the impact of "the Trump slump". The city has forecast its first decline in tourism numbers in eight consecutive annual increases.
Closer to home, and even before the announcement of latest ban, travellers are reporting having suffered what has being called the "Mem Fox treatment" – a reference to recent draconian treatment by immigration officials of the noted Australian children's author - at US airports.
Mem Fox's case, which led to an apology from the US Embassy in Australia, has emerged as something of a cause celebre in the US media as a stark example of the "customs ordeals" of foreign visitors to the US. Both The Tribune and The Washington Post, among others, have cited the recent detention of the Australian author at Los Angeles International Airport.
See also: US airport security pat-downs are about to get even more invansive
A reader of Fairfax Media's Traveller wrote that his wife was recently "arbitrarily taken, with others, to a room by customs officers" also at Los Angeles International Airport. Extraordinarily, the couple were not holidaying in the US but simply transiting to Canada.
"My efforts to accompany her were ignored and when I enquired an hour and a half later about her situation was advised it was confidential," the reader, who describes the treatment as "appalling", wrote.
"Some 20 minutes after that my wife appeared both shaken and stirred. She was told nothing and when her name was called asked where she was staying in America. On telling them nowhere as she was in transit to Canada her passport was returned and she was told to leave." Read the letter in full here.
Tourism economists in the US are already predicting a whopping 4.3 million fewer foreign visitors to the US this year, an estimated $US7.4 billion ($A9.7 billion)loss of revenue. The US economy can afford to lose the relatively small numbers of business and leisure travellers from the affected Muslim countries which represent minor tourism markets.
But it certainly can't absorb losses from its key western markets as well as neighbouring Mexico, a nation already profoundly offended by the US President's declaration the country pay for a massive border wall to deter illegal immigrants.
Stable and attractive Canada, another neighbour, is shaping as a major beneficiary of the US tourism industry's woes with at least some visitors likely to choose it as their preferred North American holiday destination.
See also: How Canada can trump the US as a tourist destination
Even if the numbers of Australians visiting the US falls by a few percentage points the impact will be felt on both sides of the Pacific with Australians among the highest-spending and longest-staying foreign visitors to the country. In Los Angeles and Hawaii, Australians are among the largest inbound tourist markets.
Many Australian-based travel operators who market travel to the lucrative US market will be affected with the risk of prospective travellers opposed to Trump, who owns nearly a dozen hotels, and his policies politically and ideologically electing to defer a holiday to the US or deciding not to go at all.
For Australians, and others, it may come down to what the Traveller reader describes in simple terms. "Message: think twice about visiting America in the current environment."
Anthony Dennis is Fairfax Media's national travel editor.
See also: Why you should still visit the US despite President Trump
See also: How I lost the right to visa-free entry into the US
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