Slashdot Mirror
US International Tourism Market Share Is Falling Under Trump (buzzfeed.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The United States' slice of the international tourism pie is declining, according to a new report from Foursquare that looks at data from millions of phones worldwide. The US share of international tourism dropped 16% in March 2017 compared with the previous year. And it declined an average of 11% year over year in months spanning October 2016 to March 2017, according to the report. The drop coincides with the final month of the US election, the Trump transition, and the early months of the Trump administration, which notably imposed a travel ban on people from several majority-Muslim countries in January 2017 that was eventually halted in court but is currently under appeal. Declines in tourism market share from people originating in the Middle East were more pronounced than the rest of the world, down 25% this January, along with a smaller decrease from South America, Foursquare found. The data accounts for the percentage of international tourism coming to the US and not the absolute number of tourists, but Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck told BuzzFeed News that it's unlikely tourist visits to the US increased while share declined. "I don't think you'd see a 16% decline in international market share and absolute numbers being up. I don't think that's compatible," he said. "The volume of tourism doesn't change that fast."
I was speaking to someone from a tour company that organises special interest escorted tours all around the world. He said they have stopped running tours to the US because they've had so many bad experiences with border protection. If one person out of a group gets held for a couple of hours, they're not only traumatised but the whole tour gets off on a wrong foot.
It was not created by Trump and the Kushner family isn't using it any way that's not available to other businesses to attract foreign investors. Most other countries (like Canada) have similar programs to attract high net worth immigrants.
the time frame when we were 98% sure hillary was going to win. so lets not try and put this on trump.
That's not great logic. The article itself states that the trend started in the last month of the campaign, during which time the race was tightening. It's entirely possible that people were uneasy about visiting a country where Trump was a serious contender, and his violent and xenophobic followers were being frequently shown on the news.
If you want to pick apart this analysis, there are better things to point to. Let's start by looking just at the graph, which seems to be your inclination. Going by the graph alone, it show enough historical data on that graph to draw any real conclusion. There's a downward trend, but that might be related to the time of year, or just be a random fluctuation. We would need to compare it to data from previous years to determine normal trends at a given time of year. We would need to look at how volatile the market is to determine whether the trend is outside the normal range of fluctuations.
Then there's how the data was collected: "Foursquare’s data comes from approximately 13 million users who opted to share their locations with the company." One question would be, how accurate is that? Further, if the data is based on location data, then even if a drop in tourism began at roughly the same time as Trump's election, that's not enough to indicate a cause. It would be a coincidence of events without any causal link.
On the other hand, it's hard to imagine that Trump's actions wouldn't have a dampening effect on voluntary travel to the US. He campaigned on the promise of getting rid of Mexicans and Muslims, assuming minorities are criminals, conducting trade wars, and putting immediate American economic interests above all else. He advocated torturing and killing innocent people if it might possibly make people feel that it would improve national security, even if it didn't actually improve it. His early actions included trying to revoke people's legal status and deport them to their country of origin (not necessarily the country they were traveling from, which makes this particularly dangerous).
What's more, I would almost expect Trump supporters to welcome the drop in international tourism. It means that there are fewer foreigners, and probably fewer minorities, entering our country. Sure, it's bad for the economy and probably a sign of greater problems, but it's not as though Trump followers are able to think deeply about indirect consequences.
that doesnt prove collusion though.... thats the issue. contact != collusion
is it worth investigating? of course! but is that alone proof of wrongdoing? not at all. not to mention that "guccifer" may or may not be russian, let alone working with the russian government
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
One that shows you don't know what the fuck a nation is? A nation is its people, not its government.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Trump had, literally, nothing to do with it. Here is a June 28th 2016 article about the searches, but our racist media gave Obama a pass until Trump got elected. And then, before the President-elect even entered office, there was an avalanche of articles about the "new" procedures — not directly blaming him, but planting the negative thoughts in the gullible heads (like yours and those of your adoring moderators here today). Only some of the reports mentioned the truth:
So, no, it had nothing to do with Trump. More likely, the reason is the growth of dollar since last December — vacationing in the US simply became more expensive for foreigners, while going abroad became cheaper for Americans.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Nope, we were there for 4 weeks about 12 months ago.
We have now chosen as a family not to go back,and its not just me and my family, its lots of people I know.