NTTO updates country market profiles with latest data showing a multi-year flatline for German visitation to the USA.
The numbers crunchers at the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) have done it again—they’ve turned out the latest annual profiles of key international source markets for inbound travelers. That’s the good news. The sad news is that these profiles dish out even more sad news which illustrate and detail the utter collapse last year of overseas travel to the United States. (International travel from the bordering countries Canada and Mexico have experienced the same crash.)
Even so, the analysts at NTTO provide travel U.S. sales and marketers and DMOs with the statistical equipment to review the data and use it to help them develop their own marketing plans and strategies. And one of the facts reflected in the data on Germany—long a Top 5 country source market for travelers to the United States—is that they have been flat since 2016. The following two tables show that, in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, the number of visitors annually, as well as the amount they spent for their U.S. travel, were essentially the same. No change.
One can’t expect to measure data for arrivals and spending for 2020 (or 2021 for the matter) against totals for 2016-2019 for a fair year-on-year comparison. Still, were you to study the other tables a little more closely, some factors such as the favored port-of-entry destination for Germans, might surprise you. For instance. In 2020, Miami’s position as a port-of-entry destination for Germans arriving in the U.S. increased more than 4 percent—a huge increase in a measure of this category.
Also, Of the top 10 overseas arrival markets in 2020, Germany saw the 2nd largest market share % change decline in arrivals between 2019 and 2020 and it posted the 3rd largest market share decline in arrivals for the two years.
And for those Germans who did visit the U.S. last year, there was a year-on-year decline on visits to art galleries and museums; casinos and visits to national parks and monuments. These and other shifts and changes—however modest—are factors that travel marketers should take into account.
(More on this in the future, but note for now that other top markets really hurt when one looks at the declining volume of travelers and percentage change in arrivals or shifts in market share are: UK, China, and Japan.)
German Market Profile: Trip Purpose—Main Purpose
German Market Profile: Trip Purpose
German Market Profile: Information Sources Used for Trip Planning
German Market Profile: Activity Participation A
German Market Profile: Activity Participation A
German Market Profile:Transportation Types Used in the U.S.
German Market Profile: Select Traveler Characteristics
German Market Profile—Ports of Entry Used to Clear U.S. Customs
Forgoing a massive table here, we looked at the changes in share between 2000 and 2020 and found
Shifts in share total seem to be negligible for the sample of major destinations below, although Miami, which had more lift than did other major destinations, did well last year (if, indeed, any destination did “well”) in the greater for the Southeast U.S. and West Coast U.S
A final note: Those interested can access the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of the NTTO team of analysts here: https://www.trade.gov/travel-and-tourism-research-team/
