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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
The ‘self-inflicted injury’ to US tourism that’s making some
Americans angry and disappointed
By Natasha Chen, CNN
Updated:
9:00 AM EDT, Sun August 31, 2025
Source: CNN
Joe Koenen has not seen a single Toronto Blue Jays baseball hat all
summer.
Typically, Canadians will flood the streets of Seattle during the
summer, but Koenen, who runs Seattle Free Walking Tours (where people
pay what they can), said Canadian tourists are almost gone. Streets
look emptier to him.
Canadians calling to cancel their tours “explicitly told me that it
was because of the policies and the behavior of our current
president,” he said.
As a result of seeing 30% fewer customers this year overall, Koenen
has been paying his employees but not himself. This is also the first
year since he took over the tour company in 2021 that he has had to put
his own savings into the business to keep it afloat.
“I am super-duper angry. I’m also disappointed, but I’m more sad
… it’s such a self-inflicted injury,” Koenen said.
Another Seattle tour operator, John Brink, said “usually you kill it
that weekend,” referring to the annual May series between the Toronto
Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners. But the foot traffic wasn’t there
this year. The Blue Jays are Canada’s only Major League Baseball
team, so while the team is based in Toronto, many fans from Western
Canada passionately sport their Blue Jays gear when they come to
Seattle each summer.
Brink’s company, Tasty Tours, which guides visitors through food
stalls in the historic Pike Place Market, has seen a 50% drop in
Canadian customers.
Many Canadians have and buying American products since the spring.
That’s when President Trump about Canada in the midst of a tariff
war.
The absence of Canadians has been felt acutely in the United States,
especially in cities like Seattle . And Canadians aren’t the only
international travelers skipping the US. Some other international
travelers have also named recent policies around tariffs and
immigration as reasons they’re staying away.
After a promising estimate in December by analytics company Tourism
Economics that the US would see about 9% growth in overall
international visitation in 2025, the company’s updated outlook now
estimates an 8.2% decline, led by about one quarter visiting the US
from January to July, compared to the same period in 2024.
The World Travel and Tourism Council, a global tourism advocacy
organization, projected in May that the United States will lose $12.5
billion in international visitor spending in 2025, the only country out
of 184 economies the council analyzed that will see a decline this
year.
‘Heading in the wrong direction’
And that pain could stretch beyond this year. Rob Hawkins, from the
United Kingdom, changed plans he and his wife had for a 20-day spring
2026 trip to the US to go to South Korea and Japan instead.
“America to me is rock ‘n roll, NASA, speed, jazz, horses, bourbon,
hip hop, dance, MTV (the original), Hollywood, gold medals, innovation,
strength, respectful (sic) and apple pie,” Hawkins told CNN in an
email. “Not the army on the streets and the extreme division
currently on show,” he said, referring to the National Guard presence
in Los Angeles during immigration raids and in Washington D.C. to take
federal control of the local police force.
The Hawkins’ decision to avoid the US for now is one echoed across
social media by others around the world.
“It’s unheard of,” said Didier Arino, general director of travel
consulting firm Protourisme in France, about an unprecedented drop in
interest for travel to the US.
“It’s happened before in a country at war, in a country where there
was a security risk, or risk of health crisis, but in a normal
situation, we’ve never seen this kind of turnaround,” .
Beyond citing fears of being questioned at the border, or general
opposition to the Trump administration’s policies, visitors from some
countries are now facing an added upfront cost of $250 for a new
“This is a wake-up call for the U.S. government. The world’s
biggest Travel & Tourism economy is heading in the wrong direction, not
because of a lack of demand, but because of a failure to act,” said
Julia Simpson, World Travel and Tourism Council president & CEO, in a
statement.
“While other nations are rolling out the welcome mat, the U.S.
government is putting up the ‘closed’ sign … This is about growth
in the U.S. economy — it is doable, but it needs leadership from
DC,” Simpson said.
‘It’s not just me’
For Brink, the Tasty Tours owner in Seattle, American cruise ship
passengers coming through the city have somewhat offset the loss in
international tourists.
Still, “I personally think without the tariffs and the rhetoric and
all that nonsense that we would all have made way much more money this
year,” Brink said.
Adam Duford, owner of Surf City Tours in Santa Monica, California, has
been feeling the pain of a tourism downturn, too.
“Spring break never happened,” said Duford. “Memorial Day
didn’t happen either.”
Duford’s business of running 13-passenger van tours through
Hollywood, Malibu and Venice, took a dive this year because of
geopolitical forces, catastrophic wildfires and misinformation.
He told CNN that customers were calling to cancel because they had seen
a fake image on social media of the Hollywood sign burning down. (It
— and all of Hollywood — is still there.) Duford points to
misinformation about the January Los Angeles fires, and later, a
misperception that protests over immigration raids had taken over the
whole city, as examples of why some people stayed away.
Overall, his revenue is down 49% this year. Duford thought this might
have been a problem specific to Los Angeles events. But he has also
noticed that his typical Canadian customer base that comes during their
spring break did not show up this year and learned of businesses in
other cities also hurting from lack of tourists.
“It’s hard to be angry, because it’s not just me,” he said.
“For all the promises of a good economy — and maybe people were
thinking, ‘we’ll sacrifice some culture war things for this good
economy that’s going to come from this administration.’ It
doesn’t seem like that’s happening.”
Prior to the latest challenges, international tourism to the United
States had yet to fully recover after the pandemic. Last year, the 72.4
million visitors from other countries represented 91% of pre-pandemic
2019 figures, according to the US National Travel and Tourism Office.
Tourism Economics, which tracks data on domestic and international
tourism, now projects that a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels
won’t happen until 2029 — three years later than it originally
projected.
Domestic tourism has not been strong enough to make up for the loss,
according to Tourism Economics.
Neighbors to the north going south
Canadians turning away from the US is particularly worrisome.
More Canadians visit the US than visitors from any other country,
according to the National Travel and Tourism Office. Canadians made up
about 28% of total international visitor arrivals in 2024.
Instead of going to the United States, “we’re seeing Canadian
travel begin to lift toward Mexico, to the Caribbean, even toward
Europe in recent data,” said Adam Sacks, president of Tourism
Economics.
“I do think once we turn into the colder months … it would be
difficult to sustain this sort of drop. I think that there will be a
bit of a bounce. But as long as the rhetoric around this — like
Canada becoming a 51st state — as long as that continues, I think
you’re going to see a pretty ongoing reaction from Canadians.”
Airlines have adjusted by changing routes that were bound for the US.
There were about 90,200 fewer airline seats available to book from
Canada to the US from April 1 to June 30, compared to the same quarter
last year, according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics
company.
It’s no wonder that Koenen and Brink are seeing so few Canadians in
Seattle: Tourism Economics estimates Seattle will lose more than a
quarter of its international visitors this year, mostly due to
Canadians staying away.
“That’s really a hard thing. I think what we see as our opportunity
is to just stand and be ready to welcome our friends from Canada back
when the time is right. The time is not right yet,” said Michael
Woody, chief strategy officer for Visit Seattle.
Mike Mondello, president and CEO of “Made in Washington,” which
features products by local artists and producers, said he realized
during the spring news cycle that “this is going to be a different
year.”
Without a doubt, he said the “softening” of business at his
downtown store has been disappointing. But Mondello said “time heals
all.”
“You won’t wake up on a Monday and say, ‘Wow, things have
changed.’ It’ll keep inching its way back, I’m pretty sure,”
Mondello said.
Woody believes there is an opportunity with the FIFA World Cup in 2026,
when his marketing team in Seattle will be collaborating with
Destination Vancouver. Seattle and Vancouver are the second-closest
geographical grouping of any of the FIFA host cities, and match
schedules have been aligned so that spectators can easily travel to see
games on both sides of the border.
Woody expects about 750,000 people flowing in and out of Seattle over
the three-week period of those games.
Still, Sacks from Tourism Economics warns that across the US, the
estimated bump in World Cup visitors in 2026 will not be enough to
overcome the damage done this year.
‘We’re here when you’re ready’
Canadians have also pulled back from other favorite destinations across
the country, including Orlando, home to the nation’s largest cluster
of theme parks.
Canadian air arrivals to Orlando were down through May and advance
hotel bookings slowed noticeably since April, according to Casandra
Matej, Visit Orlando president and CEO. But other visitors from the UK,
Brazil and Mexico have still been coming in steady numbers.
Steve Hill, CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority,
told CNN he recently returned from a sales mission in Vancouver. These
are routine trips for his team, but Hill said he personally wanted to
attend this time to hear from more than 100 tour operators and travel
agents about the sentiment in Canada.
What he heard was not surprising: A certain portion of Canadians will
not visit the US right now on principle.
“Trying to get them to overcome that too significantly, I don’t
think works very well,” Hill said. “What we told them is, you know,
we’re here when you’re ready. We hope you’re ready soon.”
Las Vegas has seen a drop in both domestic and international tourists.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s latest data
available from January to July 2025, shows overall visitor volume is
down 8% compared to the same period the year before.
Hill said other international tourists have still come in relatively
stable numbers. He also believes there will be more Canadians returning
in the fall and winter when they tend to escape the cold and enjoy
hockey season in Las Vegas.
Both Tourism Economics and several cities’ tourism bureaus told CNN
that they urgently need Congress to fully fund Brand USA, a
public-private partnership that heads a globally coordinated marketing
effort to promote the US as a premier travel destination. In July,
Congress reduced federal matching funds for Brand USA from $100 million
to $20 million.
Hawkins, the London resident who decided against his trip next year,
said he hopes the situation will improve, so that he and his wife can
still travel to Yellowstone and Las Vegas in 2027.
“I look at the hard-working Americans just as I do local business
owners here in the U.K.,” Hawkins wrote to CNN, adding that he would
“hate to see them suffer” because of government decisions.
“I wouldn’t care what political affiliation the owners would have,
as I find if you take politics out of any conversation (which I do
often), you are pretty much going to have good stuff in common with
people.”
Vivian Song contributed to this report.
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