At about the same time that a U.S. Appellate Court panel of three judges ruled on Feb. 9 against President Donald Trump’s ban on nationals from seven mostly Muslim countries entering the USA, data measuring the impact of the measure, which was implemented in a Jan. 27 executive order signed by Trump, showed that the President and his policies appeared to be a deterrent to travelers from countries around the world. This was the general finding of a study conducted by ForwardKeys, the travel intelligence analyst, which monitors travel patterns by analyzing 16 million flight reservation transactions a day. The numbers speak for themselves:

The findings show that after President Trump’s initial travel ban (imposed on January 27) net bookings issued from those seven countries (Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen) between January 28 and February 4 were down 80 percent over the same period last year.

ForwardKeys also looked at wider international trends in bookings to the USA and discovered a 6.5 percent negative variation compared with the equivalent eight-day period the year before. (The analysis excluded China and Hong Kong because of the seasonal effect due to the timing of Chinese New Year.)

—Bookings from Northern Europe were down 6.6 percent.

—Bookings from Western Europe were down 13.6 percent.

—Bookings from Southern Europe down 2.9 percent.

—Bookings from the Middle East were down 37.5 percent.

—Bookings from Asia Pacific down 14 percent.

If one analyzes total outbound bookings from each of those regions to provide a benchmark, in every case, the USA has lost market share as total outbound travel from Northern Europe was flat, from Western Europe was down 1 percent, from Southern Europe was up 3.1 percent, from the Middle East was down 13 percent, and from Asia Pacific was down 8.9 percent.

Against this trend, bookings from Central/Eastern Europe and the Americas were up 15.8 percent and 2.3 percent respectively. However, when one looks again at outbound travel from those two regions of the world, total travel was up substantially, 12 percent from Central/Eastern Europe and 4.8 percent from the Americas so the increases in travel to the USA look less impressive from this perspective.

For the Middle East as a whole – beyond the banned countries – during the last year, bookings to the USA were already down 8.8 percent, but focusing on bookings issued from January 28 to February 4, they fell 38 percent. Bookings from Saudi Arabia were down 60 percent but the substantial decrease is probably due partly to a school break, from Jan 26 to Feb. 5, which fell at a different time last year.

While travel bookings on any given day can be significantly up or down compared to the same day a year before, variability over a few consecutive days is typically much less. The eight-day period coinciding with the travel ban is the first time since before the presidential election in early November that there has been a consistently long run of negative variations compared with the equivalent period the year before. For reference, inbound bookings to the USA for the whole of the past year were down 0.4 percent.

After Federal Judge James Robart placed a temporary block on Donald Trump’s travel ban on Feb. 3—it was upheld by the U.S. Appellate Court for the Ninth District which is based in San Francisco— bookings to the USA from Iran, on February 3 and 4, saw a dramatic surge, five times higher than the same two days last year. Most were for arrival on February 5 and 6 and with lengths of stay of 22 nights or more and, according to ForwardKeys data, Iran was the only country to see such a surge following the suspension of the ban.

Flight Searches down: In another report Hopper, a digital travel app, analyzed data which revealed that interest in travel to the United States had dropped sharply since Trump was inaugurated on January 20.

The app’s methodology is simple.

Hopper calculated a number of flight searches conducted two weeks before President Trump took office and the number of flight searches conducted two weeks afterward—making the period that was analyzed approximately Jan. 6 to Feb. 3. The app then broke down the data according to which airports were searched for and calculated the difference. During this same span of time, the Trump White House instituted the travel ban.

The results show that interest in travel to the United States declined 17 percent over the course of the tracked period. Understandably, searches really took a dive on the Saturday after the travel ban (Jan. 28). The data are based on averaging billions of flight searches, according to Hopper.

Source: Hopper

The Bottom Line: Hard data regarding the financial impact of the “Trump factor” and the ban were also hard to come by, but on Feb. 10, the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) said the ban had cost the travel industry about $185 million in lost business. GBTA estimates that was the amount lost in the week following the executive order.

The association said travel business grew 1.2 percent in the week preceding the ban and dipped by 2.2 percent after the ban was announced.

A previous survey by GBTA found about 30 percent of members expected to see less overseas business travel during the next three months and almost as many believe low demand could linger for the rest of the year.

It is the strong U.S. dollar and its impact on the change rate between the dollar and other major currencies—not the hostility toward U.S. President Donald Trump—that presents the principal obstacle to sustaining or increasing growth in visitor numbers from key overseas markets in 2017 and in the short term future.

This is what the Inbound Report picked up last week during the RTO Summit West—it is produced by the NAJ Group, which also publishes the Inbound Report—after speaking to a third of the 120 so U.S. travel suppliers who attended the event in Marina del Rey, California.

To be sure, the “Trump factor” is having a real impact on some markets, such as Mexico and Germany, but the concern over a weak Euro, Canadian dollar and Mexican peso is a systemic problem—one that seems to be non-partisan.

These three currencies represent the medium of exchange for the USA’s largest three markets: Canada, Mexico and (taken collectively) continental Europe:

• While the Canadian dollar, or loon, has begun to creep back up a little from its low point last year, it is still more than 13 percent lower than it was three years ago. This has resulted in a drop in inbound traffic to the USA from Canada of 4.5 million visitors since the loonie began its decline in 2013. That is a 20 percent drop-off. (For Canadian destinations and travel suppliers, the weak loonie is a boon, as the country is expecting its highest annual total ever of inbound visitation in 2016, once final figures are in,  from the USA and overall.)
• In Mexico, where distaste for Trump is especially high, and where tourism officials work on both inbound and outbound  as well as domestic travel, the focus will be to bring U.S. visitors into Mexico and to encourage Mexicans to take their vacations within the country, the tourism ministry has said that it expects travel to the USA to decline. Francisco Madrid Flores, the director of the Faculty of Tourism at the Anahuac University, has forecast that, in 20017, travel by Mexicans abroad will decrease by two percent.
• In the Eurozone, where tour operators seem to have adjusted to a euro that has been stuck at less than $1.10 for at least the past year, the forecast of the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) has predicted virtually no growth in Europe’s top source markets in 2017—a minus one percent for Italy, a plus one percent for both Germany and France, and a plus two percent for Spain. (We’ll have a better sense of the European market next month after ITB—it is the world’s largest travel trade show—meets in Berlin.)

According to the results in a just-released study by Expedia.com®, the most active travelers are Australians, with a full 55 percent believing it is important to exercise while traveling. Americans come in a close second, at 53 percent. The people least likely to prioritize exercise while traveling can be found in the UK, with only 43 percent identifying exercise as important.

Expedia’s 2017 Expedia Fitness Breaks Study, executed in partnership with Google Consumer Surveys, is the result of a survey that asked questions of more than 7,000 residents of seven countries

The highest percentage of people who outright refuse to exercise while traveling can be found in France, at 23 percent. Only 10 percent of Americans say they “don’t work out while they travel” at all, the lowest percentage in the field. The rankings on both metrics follow:

Other Highlights/Findings from the 2017 Expedia Fitness Breaks Study:

• Globally, among those who do exercise while traveling, 22 percent claim to do so to balance indulgent food, an opinion shared most by the French (31 percent), the Australians (29 percent) and Americans (27 percent).
• Fitness activities also facilitate authentic experiences when traveling, with 16 percent of the French and 13 percent of Aussies exercising because it allows them to “see new areas of the destination.”
• Simply walking/exploring a new city is, by far, the most popular exercise undertaken while traveling, an opinion shared by 47 percent of all respondents.
• Exploration walks are most popular for Australians (just over 56 percent), the British (just under 56 percent) and Canadians (53 percent).
• The French are most likely (34 percent) to take guided walking tours, also enjoying long runs when traveling. Germans are most likely to hop on a bike (28 percent).
• Americans are most likely to modify their typical workout routine when away from home (42 percent). A full 41 percent of Australians do the same, while only 20 percent of the Spanish–the least in the field–alter their regular regimen.
• Many exercise-focused travelers simply “create my own workout” in some fashion when traveling. Canadians lead the way (47 percent), closely followed by Americans (45 percent) and Australians (just under 45 percent).
• Just under a quarter (24 percent) of the French “find local fitness activities” to undertake, the most in the field, while the British (11 percent) are the least likely to do so.
• When it comes to accommodation, Americans (39 percent) are most likely to “expect fitness offerings at your accommodations” while traveling, followed by Canadians (just under 39 percent) and Australians (33 percent). The French, at 14 percent, are least likely to expect such features.

 

About the Survey: Expedia.com conducted the Fitness Breaks study using Google Consumer Surveys, a Google service that enables polling of a demographically representative sample of people online. The study was conducted from December 1-30, 2016, and included responses from 7,059 adults.