The new studies showed that the dubbed “Trump slump”, following President Trump’s controversial proposed travel ban in January 2017 has continued even after nine months.
ForwardKeys, which predict the future global travel patterns analysed in its recent study that there are more than 17 million booking transactions a day but it’s still less by 1.4 per cent compared to the same period last year.
ForwardKeys’ analysts say there is a correlation between the first travel ban, in which President Trump announced that those from certain Muslim majority countries should not be allowed to enter the United States, and the decline of international visitors to the US.
About 39.4% of the US travel is made up of European tourists which has dropped by 2.3 per cent according to ForwardKeys’ data. Also, the Asia Pacific market share which comprises about 23% of the US travel sector has dropped by 3.8 per cent.
This decrease is a bit worrying given the fact that rest of the world has seen a rise of about 4.6 per cent.
However, there is some positive response from the Central and South America and Africa tourists which has a 2.1 per cent market share.
ForwardKeys co-founder and CEO Olivier Jager said that the latest detailed findings confirm what their data has been predicting since the first travel ban. “There has been a Trump Slump and the strong dollar has compounded it.”
Devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma in September and the attack on a Las Vegas festival by a gunman in October were the other factors which has slightly impacted the tourism industry but none of them were as negative what the travel ban did.
