Topline
About 15% fewer Indian tourists visited the U.S. in August compared to last year, deepening a decline that could cost American businesses roughly $340 million over the summer—as U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sparred over tariffs, Russian oil and who should get credit for a ceasefire between India and Pakistan.
Indian visitation to the U.S. dropped 15% in August compared to the same month last year, according to provisional data released Wednesday by the National Travel & Tourism Office (NTTO), part of the U.S. Commerce Department.
It was the third consecutive month of decline, following a 8% year-over-year drop in June and 6% in July, a period when trade diplomacy between the countries unraveled.
During the same three-month period in 2024, Indian visitation surged 35% in June, 26% in July and 9% in August compared to the same months in 2023.
Tensions between the two countries have flared in recent months, with Modi contradicting Trump’s claim that the U.S. had brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan and Trump’s 25% reciprocal tariff on Indian goods kicking in alongside a punitive 25% tariff on India for buying Russian oil.
The 10% overall drop in Indian tourists over three months likely cost the U.S. about $340 million in visitor spending at hotels, restaurants and other tourism-related businesses, based on calculations from NTTO data.
2025 is shaping up to be a very disappointing year for U.S. tourism, a $1.3 trillion industry. Trump’s tariffs and immigration policies have turned off international travelers, forcing industry analysts to scuttle their growth forecasts for a projected downturn in revenue $29 billion lower than had been originally estimated. The most notable drop in visitation has come from Canada, which delivered eight straight months of steep declines, but numbers are down from most countries around the world. “The sentiment drag has proven to be severe,” Tourism Economics, a travel-focused arm of Oxford Economics, noted in its August update. U.S. tourism officials had expected India to be a particularly safe bet this year. Last year, a record 2.2 million Indians visited the United States, making India the country’s fourth-largest inbound tourism source after Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom, according to NTTO data. Importantly, Indian tourists spent roughly $5,200 per trip in 2024, nearly three times the $1,802 spent by the average international visitor. In January, Brand USA, the marketing arm of U.S. tourism, held its largest-ever sales and media mission in Hyderabad, arriving with a delegation of 48 U.S. tourism companies and 67 exhibitors whose shared goal was to attract more Indian travelers. That same month, Indian travelers had an extremely positive view of the U.S., with 86% saying they were likely to visit America within two years, according to a survey by Future Partners, a tourism market research firm. In April, a Skift Research report found India to be the only country among the United States’ top five source markets where travelers’ intentions to visit the U.S. had not taken a negative shift. More recently, however, that goodwill appears to have waned, likely reflecting the current frayed geopolitical relationship between the two countries. Notably, in July, India began issuing tourist visas for Chinese citizens for the first time in five years—marking a significant thawing in relations after a deadly clash in 2020 along their border in the western Himalayas plunged relations to their lowest point in decades.
President Trump posted on Truth Social that he had called Prime Minister Modi for his 75th birthday Wednesday. It was the first time the men had spoken since a contentious call three months ago when Modi rejected Trump’s claim that the United States had mediated a cease-fire between India and Pakistan. Trade talks between the U.S. and India have been ongoing for months without a bilateral agreement, but India’s chief economist said he expects the U.S. to scrap the 25% penal import tariff on Indian goods and also cut reciprocal tariff to 10-15%, Reuters reported Thursday.
With nearly 1.5 billion people, India has the world’s largest population and the fourth-largest economy, with a gross national product of $4.2 trillion, according to the International Monetary Fund. Outbound travel from India is growing much faster than from any other country, “more than doubling from 2019,” Caroline Bremner, the former head of travel and tourism research at Euromonitor International, told Forbes last year. Driven by the country’s surging middle class, Indian tourists are projected to spend as much as $144 billion a year on international travel by 2030, according to the Arabian Travel Market, an annual industry conference on Middle East tourism. A 2024 report from McKinsey was similarly bullish, estimating that India’s outbound travel had the potential to grow from 13 million trips in 2022 to over 80 million in 2040. Global destinations are all competing for their slice of that very lucrative pie.
- That’s how many countries allow Indian travelers to visit without first obtaining a visa as of 2025, according to the Henley & Partners Passport Index. But the United States neither grants visa-free entry to Indian tourists nor does it make procuring a visa fast and easy. The average wait time for a visa appointment in India is four months, according to the U.S. State Department website. In comparison, Indian tourists can get a visa to visit the United Kingdom in roughly three weeks or Canada in four to six weeks.
Why The World’s Top Travel Brands Are Betting Big On Indian Tourists (Forbes)