Tourism Visitors to US fall as "Trump slump" bites

Atman said business was so-so, and King Kong beat his chest in agreement.

- Edward Helmore

Neither could predict it would improve, and both could only hope. As with Times Square's costumed characters who offer to have their photos taken with visitors last week, so it is with the US tourism business at large.

The effect of economic and political turbulence on the number of foreign visitors coming to the US is for now hard to define. But both – whether through tariffs, currency exchange chaos, or fears over political ill-winds – are sending chills through the $2.36tn (£1.78tn) business, the world's most powerful travel and tourism market.

Warnings that international tourism to the US could be hit by Donald Trump's effort to re-engineer economic and political relations with the rest of the world are slowly emerging. The federal government's National Travel and Tourism Office released preliminary figures last week showing visits to the US from overseas fell 11.6% in March compared with the same month last year. According to the data, international arrivals from China were down nearly 1%. Wolfgang Georg Arlt, the chief executive of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute thinktank, called it the "Trump slump".

The Delta Air Lines chief executive, Ed Bastian, also said the company would not expand flying in the second half of the year because of disappointing bookings amid Trump's unpredictable trade policies after cutting its first-quarter earnings outlook, citing weaker-than-expected corporate and leisure travel demand.