The U.S. government reported a double-digit overall drop in international arrivals last month, with much bigger losses from Canada, Mexico and the lucrative Western Europe market, suggesting foreign tourists are staying away in significant numbers due to tariff backlash and harsher immigration tactics.
A tourist takes in the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry.
17% fewer Western Europeans visited the U.S. in March compared to the same period last year, according to preliminary data released Tuesday by the National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO), the agency within the U.S. Commerce Department that tracks tourism statistics.
The governments of the two largest European markets—the United Kingdom (down 15%) and Germany (down 29%)—warned citizens last month about traveling to the U.S. due to the possibility of detention by American federal immigration authorities.
March inbound tourism volume also dropped year over year from the Caribbean (down 26%), Central America (down 24%), South America (down 11%), Africa (down 10%), Oceania (down 8%) and Asia (down 1%), per NTTO’s data.
The only two regional markets to send more tourists to the U.S. than last year were the Middle East (up 21%) and Eastern Europe (up 2%), which together make up roughly 7% of total inbound visitors to the U.S.
Arrivals from Mexico by air were down 5% in February and 23% in March year over year, while NTTO data on car arrivals is not yet available.
The NTTO has not yet reported inbound data from Canada for February or March, but Statistics Canada reported a 23% year-over-year drop in car travel and a 2.4% drop in air travel to the U.S. in February.
On the heels of two years of strong growth, the U.S. tourism industry predicted another good year as recently as last month. “Arrivals from all top countries will continue to increase in 2025,” the NTTO said in its March report. But the agency’s own data from March shows an 11% overall drop in foreign visitation, following a smaller decline in February. Now, some industry leaders are adjusting their forecasts sharply downward. “Trump Administration policies and pronouncements are resulting in a negative sentiment shift toward the U.S. among travelers,” wrote analysts at Tourism Economics, which revised its 2025 forecast for a 9% loss of inbound foreign tourists after initially predicting a 9% jump. That 18% swing could be the beginning of a long-term decline, with the analysts adding, “We expect the negative impact on international travel to the US to be strongest in 2025, but it will likely persist in degrees through the remainder of Trump’s second term.”
78%. That’s the percentage of total U.S. arrivals from the top 12 inbound markets—Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Brazil.
Whether inbound tourism will drop off even further this year. President Trump's Liberation Day tariff hike “surpasses the assumptions we [initially] used,” Tourism Economics said, warning “the potential that the negative impacts to US inbound travel may be worse than anticipated in this update.”
Tourism Economics is currently predicting a 20.5% decline in tourists from Canada this year. The U.S. Travel Association (USTA) warned in February that even a 10% reduction in Canadian inbound travel could translate to $2.1 billion in lost spending and 140,000 jobs jeopardized in the hospitality and related sectors.
How Trump Is Torpedoing Foreign Tourism To The US—Potentially For Years To Come, Say Analysts (Forbes)