		<div class="wpcnt">
			<div class="wpa">
				<span class="wpa-about">Advertisements</span>
				<div class="u top_amp">
							<amp-ad width="300" height="265"
		 type="pubmine"
		 data-siteid="111265417"
		 data-section="1">
		</amp-ad>
				</div>
			</div>
		</div><p>Concerns that the US tourism industry might witness a &#8220;Trump slump&#8221; in travel due to the new administration&#8217;s policies appear to be premature, new figures suggest.</p>
<p>International arrivals and travel-related spending are up in 2017 compared with the same period in 2016.</p>
<p>There might even be a &#8220;Trump bump&#8221;, according to Roger Dow, CEO of the US Travel Association, a non-profit representing the travel industry.</p>
<p>A few months ago, some warned that President Donald Trump&#8217;s travel ban and anti-immigrant rhetoric could hurt tourism.</p>
<p>But the latest numbers from the US Travel Association showed a 4% growth in international travel to the US in April and a 5% growth in May compared with the same months last year.</p>
<p>Various individual sectors of the travel industry also report no declines so far.</p>
<p>The &#8220;impending doom hasn&#8217;t manifested itself&#8221;, Mr Dow said.</p>
<p>&#8220;Right now we cannot identify a loss. It&#8217;s contrary to everything we&#8217;ve heard, but travel is in slightly better shape than it was a year ago. Everyone wants me to tell the story of the sky is falling, but for the travel industry, the sky is not falling.&#8221;</p>
<p>Hotel occupancy for the first five months of 2017 was &#8220;higher than it has ever been before&#8221;, said Jan Freitag, senior vice president with STR, which tracks hotel industry data.</p>
<p>American Express Meetings &#038; Events has &#8220;not seen a slowdown in either domestic US meetings or international meetings from the US in the past six months&#8221;, according to senior vice president Issa Jouaneh.</p>
<p>Even New York&#8217;s National September 11 Memorial and Museum has had more international visitors: 554,381 at the museum from January 1 to July 11, up from 517,539 in the same period last year.</p>
<p>Florida&#8217;s Orlando International Airport, a gateway for theme park visitors, reported growth for domestic and international passengers in the year to date, though Visit Orlando CEO George Aguel said it was &#8220;still premature to determine a specific impact&#8221; from Trump administration policies.</p>
<p>International trips are often planned months in advance, so decisions made this year about travel may not be evident yet.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;For us, we already planned before the election,&#8221;</i> said Alban Michel, waiting with a group of Swiss tourists to see One World Trade&#8217;s observatory in New York on Monday.</p>
<p>Companies that track online behaviour say searches for US.travel are down.</p>
<p>Yet tour companies that bring foreigners here are &#8220;not only holding year over year, but in many cases they&#8217;re having a record year&#8221;, according to Chris Thompson, CEO of Brand USA, which markets the US to the world.</p>
<p>Mr Thompson thinks it is &#8220;too early to tell&#8221; how the industry will fare, adding that the travel industry&#8217;s ups and downs may have &#8220;little or nothing to do&#8221; with Mr Trump and more to do with the strong dollar and lacklustre economies elsewhere.</p>
<p>Asked if there&#8217;s a &#8220;Trump slump&#8221; in travel to the 12 Southern states marketed by Travel South USA, CEO Liz Bittner said: <i>&#8220;The truth of the matter is no. I think it was a lot of media hype.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Ms Bittner agreed that the challenge for US tourism <i>&#8220;isn&#8217;t so much Trump. It&#8217;s the strong US dollar against some of the other currencies&#8221;,</i> which makes the US an expensive destination for foreigners.</p>
<p>Daniele Biron, an Italian visiting the 9/11 memorial while in New York for a conference, agreed that &#8220;the value of the dollar&#8221; is a factor for many travellers, but &#8220;I don&#8217;t know if the politics&#8221; matter to most visitors.</p>
<p>Isabelle Bornemann, owner of Alaska Travel Connections, said her international group bookings are down 30%, mainly because of the strong dollar.</p>
<p>But some European travel agencies told Ms Bornemann the decision to stay away is political, based on the perception that foreigners are not welcome in the US.</p>
			<div style="padding-bottom:15px;" class="wordads-tag" data-slot-type="belowpost">
				<div id="atatags-dynamic-belowpost-68ecee06248a4">
					<script type="text/javascript">
						window.getAdSnippetCallback = function () {
							if ( false === ( window.isWatlV1 ?? false ) ) {
								// Use Aditude scripts.
								window.tudeMappings = window.tudeMappings || [];
								window.tudeMappings.push( {
									divId: 'atatags-dynamic-belowpost-68ecee06248a4',
									format: 'belowpost',
								} );
							}
						}

						if ( document.readyState === 'loading' ) {
							document.addEventListener( 'DOMContentLoaded', window.getAdSnippetCallback );
						} else {
							window.getAdSnippetCallback();
						}
					</script>
				</div>
			</div>
Discover more from London Glossy Post
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
