The lobby’s latest Economic Impact Research showed a 6.9 percent decline in international visitor spending, from $181 billion in 2024 to $168.7 billion this year, sounding the alarm for U.S. tourism.
The document — first reported by the New York Times — doesn’t spell out which countries are seeing the largest declines in tourists to the U.S.
By contrast, domestic visitor spending is expected to remain stable at about $1.5 trillion — a figure that shows the U.S. tourism industry is nearly 90 percent dependent on domestic travel.
“We absolutely have seen a decline in popularity of foreign travelers coming to the U.S.,” said Ellie Mertz, Airbnb CFO, during the homestay booking platform’s first-quarter earnings call.
“It’s less popular to come to the U.S. from a year ago, also relative to the beginning of the year,” she added.
However, Mertz said, “as a reminder, U.S. travel is predominantly domestic.”
Online travel agency Booking.com also noted a slowdown in U.S. tourism.
“Looking at our room night growth by region in the first quarter, Europe and Asia were up high single digits, rest of world was up low double digits, and the U.S. was up low single digits,” the platform said in its Q1 results.
