It was ironic that on the weekend the US’s huge inbound tourism event IPW 2025 got going in Chicago, overtourism protests were breaking out in Europe.
However, if the statistics are to be believed, overtourism is not a problem many parts of the US will have to deal with for the time being.
It’s been a tough start to the year for US tourism after Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, bringing with him his volatile approach to governance.
A few short months later, Tourism Economics said Trump’s policies and pronouncements had contributed to "a negative sentiment shift toward the US among international travellers". Put simply, Trump is putting some tourists off.
Two-thirds of travel agent respondents to a recent TTG survey said there had "definitely" been a downturn in US bookings.
However, data published by the US International Trade Administration paints a less dramatic picture; arrivals during the first three months of 2025 are down just 2% year-on-year to 15.7 million, with UK arrivals leading the way at just under 800,000.
Visit USA, meanwhile, has said first-quarter bookings from the UK are holding "steady".
’Huge challenges’
While IPW was a hugely energising celebration of the many positives about the US, no-one at the event could fail to sense the undercurrent of uncertainty surrounding tourism to the States under Donald Trump.
Earlier this month, a US Senate committee proposed the budget for the nation’s destination marketing organisation Brand USA be cut from $100 million to $20 million.
It remains to be seen if that will be followed through, but the organisation – and, by proxy, inbound travel to the US – is undoubtedly facing huge challenges.
And that’s before we get onto the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies and the impact they are having on consumers working out where to invest their own travel budgets.
In his opening address at IPW, Brand USA president and chief executive Fred Dixon was naturally diplomatic, highlighting the huge value of tourism – and of Brand USA since its inception in 2010 – to the US economy.
It fell to DesTination DC chief executive Elliot Ferguson, who along with four others was removed from Brand USA’s board earlier this year by the US Department of Commerce, to speak more openly about the challenges facing the industry at a Washington DC press conference on the second day of the event.
’What a story the US has to tell’
So far, so unsettling for US inbound tourism in 2025, right? But hold on. Amid all the political and diplomatic noise, the US travel industry has simply been getting on with business. And boy, does it have a story to tell.
I’ve been to a lot of travel industry events over the years, and the positive energy at IPW 2025 was on a par with any of them. The pace at which opportunities for the sector were being discussed was unrelenting.
There’s the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independent next year, the upcoming Fifa World Cup, the 100th birthday of the iconic Route 66, which runs from IPW host city Chicago all the way to Santa Monica in Los Angeles, which will host the 2028 Olympic Games.
There is no shortage of hooks for the country to attract tourists in the months and years ahead – and for travel agents to sway their clients to take a trip across the pond.
Chicago truly grasped the opportunity to put itself in the travel industry shop window at the event and demonstrate why it ranks so highly among US visitors
Its offering is soon to be boosted by the Obama Presidential Center, an extraordinary new cultural centre and public space, slated to open on the city’s South Side next spring.
’Nothing is permanent’
To me, it seems there’s quite the dichotomy going on in US tourism at the moment. On the one hand, the current challenges are unarguable. On the other, the industry has never felt more vibrant and energised – and, yes, welcoming to foreign visitors.
If the travel industry here can mitigate the Trump effect and continue finding new and innovative ways to market themselves on the global stage, even if budgets are slashed, its current issues will one day register as little more than a blip on the chart of never-ending growth for tourism to the US.
While overtourism demonstrations were being held in several European destinations at the weekend, there was another sort of protest happening in downtown Chicago – one of the many "No Kings" protests across America, aimed at Donald Trump.
There are still three-and-a-half years of the second Trump administration to go, but it was a reminder that – as one of the greatest imports from the UK to the US, Charlie Chaplin, once said – “nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles”.
The US tourism industry should certainly take a lot of heart from that.
