By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com
The theme for this year’s National Travel & Tourism Week, taking place May 3-9, says it all: “Travel Is Essential.” Not a luxury. Not a frivolous activity. Travel powers local economies, connects communities, supports millions of jobs and enriches, regenerates and benefits our lives in immeasurable ways.
Travel – encompassing transportation, tourism, hospitality, attractions, and scores of related services – supports millions of jobs. In fact, one out of 11 jobs in the United States is dependent upon travel.
Travel drives tax revenue, builds cultural understanding and connects people in ways no other industry can.
Travel is the family road trip that forges lifelong bonds and memories. The business trip that changed the trajectory of a career. The reunion or chance meeting that could happened because someone set out on a journey.
This year’s celebration takes on special significance as the United States of America prepares to host historic events that will put local communities on the global stage.
“The World Cup is weeks away. America’s 250th birthday is right behind it,” said Geoff Freeman, President and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association. “Tens of millions of visitors are coming, and the travel industry is what makes that possible. National Travel and Tourism Week is our moment to make sure every policymaker, every community leader and every American understands what is at stake and what this industry delivers. “
Since the first NTTW in 1983, the event has been used to showcase how travel fosters vital connections and to combat adverse government policies because of sheer ignorance of the industry’s importance.
That year, 1983, was similar to this, in that a hostile federal government headed by President Ronald Reagan (the guy who fired all the Air Traffic Controllers), was in charge, completely clueless as to how important travel and transportation was to their communities and America’s place in the world. Amtrak was decimated. Funding to promote Visit USA abroad was cut.
But Reagan had nothing on Trump in terms of overt aggression that have undermined travel into the US, and so hurt household finances as to curtail Americans’ ability to travel within it.
Against unprecedented attacks on every element of travel and tourism, this year’s theme, “Postmarked: Essential,” highlights that in every corner of the country, travel is a foundational pillar of growth, leaving an indelible mark on our local economies and culture.
Here’s a reminder of just how the U.S. travel industry is essential to the nation’s economic strength and global competitiveness. U.S. Travel data shows that in 2025, travel accounted for:
- Travel powers the U.S. economy. Travel generates $1.4 trillion in direct travel spending, $2.9 trillion in annual economic output – 2.4% of GDP and contributes $197 billion in tax revenue.
- Travel industry supports 15 million jobs (one out of every 11 jobs). It is one of America’s most powerful engines of growth, prosperity, and upward mobility. It is a common story that people start at the lowest rung of a hotel, a tour company, a travel agency, an airline and rise to the top.
- Travel strengthens communities. Visitor spending funds critical public services—infrastructure, schools and emergency response—and creates opportunities that lift both rural and urban communities. Travel also provides the financial underpinnings for communities to protect their historic places, culture, heritage and traditions. It provides the jobs that enable young people to continue to live and raise their families in their hometown.
- Travel enriches our lives. Travel expands perspective, opens minds, inspires lifelong learning, enhances well-being and creates meaningful connections to culture, history and community. It opens doors to experiences that educate, connect and bring Americans—and the world—closer together. Travel promotes physical wellness, mental and emotional wellbeing, self-fulfillment and helps build bonds among family and friends.
- Travel is essential to America’s past, present and future. As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, travel shapes how people experience our nation.
- Travel fuels public diplomacy and cultural exchange—projecting America’s values abroad and strengthening global ties. Every American traveler going abroad and every visitor from abroad becomes an ambassador, carrying home stories about the people, places and cultural experiences that shape their understanding of America.
A family trip to Yellowstone National Park forges bonds among siblings, generations and connections to the American experience © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com
Travel & tourism nationally and globally was headed to record levels in 2026 – that is before Trump returned to office, instituting policies intended to isolate Americans from the rest of the world with outright hostility (tariffs, threats to invade allies, pull out of NATO, and launch a war of choice against Iran that may well trigger a global recession) as well as policies banning travel from dozens of nations and increasing visa fees and admission fees to national parks.
International travelers – especially from Canada, the biggest inbound market – are turned off to coming (even boycotting the US), and American travelers are showing concern about traveling abroad, while the spike in gas prices and airline fares (not to mention TSA and air traffic control issues), financial pressures and concern for job security, are causing Americans to cancel or change plans.
And now, the Iran War is not just causing airlines to double and triple fares but cancel flights altogether, while sparking a global recession that will rob people of their ability to travel.
Every policy that Trump has implemented since returning to office has harmed travel and tourism in ways that if he intended to, he could not have been more effective.
From his tariffs, to his mass deportation and militarizing city streets, to threatening to make Canada the 51st State, invade Greenland and takeover Panama, to actually invading Venezuela and launching a devastatingly destructive war against Iran, to literally ending America’s public health system and cutting off access to health care, while re-establishing measles and letting the world know that they may well be exposed to some debilitating or fatal disease that otherwise would be prevented, to raising costs for essentials meaning that families are less able to afford vacations or travels, to causing spikes in gas and jet fuel putting long-haul trips out of reach, to instituting travel bans on much of the world and increasing visa costs for others (but you can buy citizenship and a Trump gold visa for $5 million), to reveling in government shutdowns that add to the difficulty and misery and jeopardize safety of air travel, shutter access to national parks and monuments (and raising costs astronomically), to literally reducing national security while making it clear that law enforcement is being marshalled not against actual fraudsters, predators and criminals but against those on Trump’s enemies list.
Trump’s Iran War has resulted in threats of a global recession; fuel shortages are causing countries to limit work weeks, require work-for-home, airlines to increase fares by 2 or 3 times and cancel huge number of flights altogether, inflation to rise, the dollar’s value to fall (not to mention trump has added $2 trillion to the national debt in record time, while at the same time, destroying trust in the dollar and displacing the dollar as a reserve currency with cyber currency and pushing countries to do deals in Chinese currency).
It’s not just the cost and affordability of travel, it’s concern about travel safety – turning more of the globe into war zones, but also raising fears of terrorism and anti-American hostility.
Washington DC is the poster child for both the benefits of tourism and the direct negative impacts of Trump’s policies. Tourism is a major economic driver for Washington, D.C. where some 27.2 million visitors generate $11.4 billion in direct spending, supporting 111,500 local jobs, $5.7 billion in income; the city collects $2.3 billion in state and local tax revenue that supports essential public services and saves approximately $3,608 in taxes for every D.C. household. But Trump’s policies – government shutdowns, tariffs, war, travel bans and visa increases, the militarization of the city streets, his cruel immigration policies, firing tens of thousands of federal workers, and even his characterization of the capital as crime-ridden, have resulted in a decline in both domestic and international visitors, negatively impacting the hospitality and travel sector.
As New York Times reported, “Faced with economic uncertainty, rising airfares and geopolitical instability that has prompted the State Department to issue a global travel warning, many Americans are rethinking their summer travel plans, either changing destinations or canceling their trips entirely. An April poll, by the market research firm YouGov and the travel rewards website The Points Guy, found that 24 percent of Americans had reconsidered travel because of recent global events.
“Among the respondents, 15 percent said they were avoiding some destinations because of safety concerns, while 20 percent said they were avoiding international travel altogether. Outbound travel from the United States fell 2.1 percent in March and continued to drop in April, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.”
(“Stay Put or Travel Abroad? Americans Are Rethinking Their Summer Travel Plans.”)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/28/travel/summer-international-travel-us-iran-war.html
A recent poll shows that in response to the Iran War and high gas prices, 34% of Americans have changed their vacation plans and 44% have cut back on driving.
Travel is antithetical to the MAGA goal of isolating (alienating) the United States, for all the reasons that travel is the best invention civilization has devised to build progress, prosperity, peace, understanding and collaboration among peoples. It damages their ability to control people, shape culture (DEI bad! political satire bad!) and the message (American Exceptionalism! “American Dream can be yours if you just work hard enough!”) if people see for themselves better ways to organize society and community (universal health care, child care, parental leave, windmills that don’t cause cancer, solar energy, fresh uncontaminated food, fast trains, no fear of daily mass shootings).
As Trump wrote in a Truth Social post (where all presidential policies are issued): “If gas hits $5 maybe you stay home a bit, relax, enjoy some peace and quiet for a change, spend time with family, have a nice drink, it’s not the worst thing. People are always rushing around, now maybe you slow it down, which frankly isn’t so bad. And when the midterms come, remember this very clearly- we won, we kept you safe, we did what had to be done. Don’t punish strength.”
The United States used to be the Number One bucket-list destination for international travelers, so much admired for our vitality, values and achievements, now the USA is on travel advisories. Canadians are boycotting. Trump has actually banned travel from dozens of countries or raised visa fees. Meanwhile, airline fares are either skyrocketing because of fuel costs or carriers are canceling flights altogether, and international travelers so anxious to visit Yosemite, Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon may find themselves shut out because of another government shutdown that Trump seems to enjoy so much. The anticipated windfall from hosting the World Cup is likely not to materialize.
Just how important is international travel to the United States? International travelers spend roughly $176 billion to $190 billion annually in the U.S. (before Trump, tariffs, visa fees, travel bans, bashing allies and the Iran War, the decline in international arrivals and receipts already felt in 2025 which was forecast to be a banner year). This spending makes travel one of the nation’s top services exports, according to the U.S. Travel Association.
Individual overseas visitors spend approximately $4,000 to $4,200 per trip, staying an average of 18 nights. As a result, international inbound travel accounts for a disproportionate amount of revenue. The money is injected into local economies through lodging, food, recreation, gifts and shopping, transportation, attractions – every $1 spent, has a $4 impact.
Canadian travelers – the largest international market into the US – is down (21 percent, or 3.4 million visits, to New York, alone). According to the latest Longwoods International tracking study of Canadian travelers, 57% of them report U.S. government policies, trade practices and political statements make them less likely to travel to the U.S. in the next 12 months. And of those Canadians whose travel is being influenced by U.S. policies, 35% are replacing their trip to the U.S. with travel in Canada, 25% will go to another international destination and 13% will cancel their trip. Among those replacing the U.S. with other international travel, Europe remains the top alternative, followed by Mexico and Asia.
“U.S. politics and trade policy have reduced Canadian travel to the U.S. for a year”, said Amir Eylon, President and CEO of Longwoods International. “And now the war in Iran is negatively affecting all international travel by Canadians.”
Thirty-eight percent of Canadian travelers report that they are less likely to travel internationally because of the war in Iran. And the percentage of Canadians who believe the U.S. is a safe place to visit continues to decline, from 42% a year ago to 34% now. (https://longwoods-intl.com/)
It seemed that Americans choosing to travel domestically might make up the loss from international travel, but that is questionable. Not only are international travelers snubbing the USA, but Americans can’t afford to travel unless they scale down considerably (and are fearful they will be stranded when TSA shuts down again, airlines have to cancel flights or there is another government shutdown which Trump loves, causing shuttering national parks, monuments and sites). Even the consumer protections for airline travel, ticket sales and so forth, have been repealed by the pro-corporation, pro-donor Trump administration which dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Considering the vital economic importance of the travel industry, it is shocking, really, how the industry has failed to use its clout to reverse these destructive policies.
This month, the U.S. Travel Association hosted its Destination Capitol Hill lobbying event in Washington, DC, bringing nearly 400 U.S. Travel members and industry advocates representing 49 states to meet with members of Congress to advocate for key policy changes shaping the future of travel.
The “asks” for lawmakers this spring included cosponsoring and passing legislation to ensure air traffic controllers and TSA officers are paid during funding lapses to prevent the chaos experienced last month.
U.S. Travel members also pushed for Congress to halt proposed changes to the ESTA application and delay or limit the proposed Visa Integrity Fee and to cosponsor the VISIT USA Act, which would transfer $160 million in surplus Travel Promotion Funds to Brand USA, that promotes international travel into the USA. (Inbound travel is a major export that contributes to the reduction in the trade deficit.)
The American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA), which represents those who used to be called travel agents, also held their Legislation Day in the Capitol, basically pleading for their continued existence. (Travel advisors are among millions who are threatened with displacement by Artificial Intelligence, but the Trump administration cancelled whatever analysis and regulation was being studied by the Biden administration, opening the way for a wild west that could eliminate millions of jobs.)
The event brought travel advisors – from one-person independent contractors to leaders of the nation’s largest Travel Management Companies – from across the country to the nation’s capital to advocate for policies that support small business travel agencies, protect consumers and strengthen the travel industry overall (Trump repealed Biden’s increased consumer protections on airline tickets, junk fees at resorts and concert tickets).
In 2025, travel agencies booked $128 billion worth of travel arrangements (a figure that was projected to grow to $165 billion by 2028), including 800,000 airline tickets daily totaling $100 billion in annual sales. Travel agencies are also responsible for booking more than 70 percent of all cruises and 60 percent of tour packages.
“Travel advisors are on the front lines of this industry every day,” said Zane Kerby, ASTA President and CEO. “They understand what travelers need, where the market is heading and what policy changes would make a meaningful difference. Legislative Day tells the story grounded in data, real-world experience and the voices of the professionals who keep people traveling.”
U.S. Travel President and CEO Geoff Freeman stated, “America saw that travel is much more than just getting from point A to point B during the government shutdowns, and we’ll see it again with the impact America 250, the World Cup and the Olympics will bring to every corner of our country. But we still have work to do to capture these opportunities.”
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