Nearly three out of every four overseas visitors to the United States have made New York, Florida or California their USA state destination of choice. At the same time, the city of New York and its metropolitan area has remained about twice as popular as any other city destination. These two findings are just a few that stand out in the complete data for 2017 recently released by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO).
The data for 2017 were finally completed at the end of 2018, but their availability became problematic with the more than month-long partial shutdown of U.S. government agencies that did not end until January 25. The shutdown wreaked havoc on NTTO’s calendar for planned releases of monthly arrivals data; it will be some time before those numbers are released in timely fashion.
There don’t seem to be any surprises in the state and city data in the tables below. They do suggest, however, that overseas visitors have yet to make non-gateway destinations the lead city for their itineraries. The only exception in the Top 25 cities (and their metropolitan areas) below is Flagstaff, Arizona. But Flagstaff is generally considered as a “base camp” or point of entry for the hugely popular Grand Canyon National Park, which is about 75 miles away.
