By DAMIAN FRANCIS, Editorial Director
Last year, IPW took place in the shadow of riots, including in the host city of Chicago. What is in store this year? Damian Francis takes a look to find out.
It’s a fitting time to take another look into the US tourism scenario.
In a month today, the USA’s largest inbound tourism conference, IPW, will again be in full swing, this time in Fort Lauderdale.
Almost a year ago today, I penned this piece on whether tourism to the US was about to fall through the floor.
In a slight but appropriate aside, in my discussions with industry leaders at the time, there was one in particular who was pushing me to write about the reality of inbound tourism to the US against the data, not the hearsay.
That was CATO boss Brett Jardine, who insisted that someone needed to go beyond the headlines and just dive into what the data said.
It was his last day at the helm yesterday as he stepped down to focus on his battle with cancer. While he’ll be missed, I look forward to his return (he told Travel Daily this week it’s a well-deserved break, not retirement) and more discussions with him where he pushes for deeper analysis.
Anyway…
A year ago, President Trump’s second administration was starting to feel the flow, and those aforementioned media headlines suggested that Australia and the rest of the world was getting nervous.
The AUD sat at just over US$0.60 and I quoted a number of headlines including the Economic Times, which ran, “Economic crisis in the making: Damning report says U.S. tourism faces $64 billion blow as Trump administration’s trade wars drive away foreign visitors and cut spending”.
Charting Australian visitation to the US against the value of our dollar versus the Greenback, it seemed like it may have been much ado about nothing. You can revisit those charts in the link above.
Since then, however, it would be wildly inaccurate to say that the situation has improved.
Attending a few industry events recently gave me the opportunity to speak to some senior leaders (some from the US) on background about their thoughts on the situation.
One stuck out in particular. When I asked quite casually whether the current situation (the crisis in the Middle East and the Trump Administration) had affected business, the response was, “F**k yes, massively, it’s a disaster – no one has any confidence to come to the US”.
On the record and more moderately, I listened to a panel discussion at Collette’s Sydney event this week, where Jeff Roy, EVP & chief revenue officer of the business, shared his thoughts.
“We’re going through a lot of challenges right now for 2026,” he admitted.
“You know, we’ve definitely seen a pullback in new booking activity, however, people are travelling. For those that are on the books, people are making arrangements, and they’re getting out on tour.
“This is actually one of the biggest months we’ll have for the year in April, and people are going from Australia, so I think we should have a lot of confidence in that,” he added.
Talk of the US midterms in November was also rife, with more than one quoting media reports of the Democrats potentially being able to retake the House for the final two years of Trump’s presidency.
RealClear’s generic congressional vote poll, where people are asked whether they will vote for the Democrats or Republicans for Congress, showed the Democrats with a five-percentage point lead over the Republicans at 47.4% to 42%.
But that it isn’t until November, and regardless, President Trump will still be the president of the US.
If you believe that the president is affecting inbound US tourism substantially, things likely won’t change for some time.
What we have been able to see, however, is how things have changed since the article I wrote a year ago.
This week, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its latest figures for Australian travel to the US.
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The US isn’t the only one that has lost out – of the top 10, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia also dropped, but they all dropped after a significant increase the previous year. The same can’t be said for the US, which stagnated from February 2024 to February 2025’s results.
February 2024 was already a significant drop from the February 2019 results shown, and it’s been the only country in the top 10 not to have the ’24, ’25, or ’26 results come anywhere near what was recorded in 2019.
Data from the US International Trade Administration backs this up.
I took the 2025 Australian visitation data and overlaid it on the 2024 data.
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The pattern of visitation remains the same – the drop from one year to the next is noticeable.
Speaking about the latest ABS statistics to Travel Daily yesterday, Australian Travel Industry Association (ATIA) CEO Dean Long said there was clear contrast between the appetite for the United States versus Asia.
“Australians are travelling in record numbers but they are increasingly choosing Asia over America, and the trend is clear across multiple months and multiple destinations,” Long said.
“Vietnam, Japan and China are all growing strongly, the United States is not. This data covers the period before the tariff escalation in April, so the next report will tell us a great deal about whether that has accelerated the shift.”
While it is not necessarily the best indicator of visitation patterns for various reasons, the passenger trends from airlines connecting Australia and the US have also been interesting to monitor. Heads up – get ready for some interesting data.
I graphed BITRE statistics from 2024 and 2025 with AI – the caveat here is that the latest data we have is November 2025, which was released on 08 April.
Firstly, to note, the passenger numbers on the Y-axis are not to the same scale, but they make it easier to see the YoY difference as the important thing is not so much the passenger numbers themselves, but whether there is a drop from 2024 to 2025.
Results are very much mixed. Qantas rose while United saw a small drop. Delta had an anomaly at the end of 2024 that made the result look alarming, but it’s really not, and American also dipped but it is following the same trend.
I checked Hawaiian Airlines as well, but the years were so similar it wasn’t worth including.
For comparison, I added in Air Canada with the theory being that perhaps some who were planning on visiting the US diverted to Canada instead.
Since the Air Canada strikes of August 2025, visible from the bottom out on the graph, the rebound would be quite pleasing for the airline in terms of its Australian routes.
There is a definitive drop in US visitation. In a month’s time we will hear in detail what Brand USA and suppliers on the ground are doing about it – Travel Daily will be there to report in detail on what is going on.
In the meantime, it is worth thinking about opportunities, not just the challenges that the situation presents. Australians still want to travel – if they were planning on going to the US and have decided to avert their attention elsewhere, it could have much longer-lasting opportunity than just the next trip.
The rest of the week…
Qantas and Virgin Australia went tit for tat this week when the national carrier announced a raft of route changes due to the fuel crisis. The announcement was followed just a day later by one from Virgin Australia which, while admitting that future operations would be reconsidered soon, said that successful hedging had put them in a good position and it was pretty much business as usual currently.
In a connected story, Australian Regional Tourism (ART) expressed “deep concern” for the future of regional travel, with recent flight cuts and airfare increases from Aussie carriers tipping the segment into a state of “crisis”.
Meanwhile out of the air and on to the seas, Holland America Line (HAL) announced its largest-ever fleet upgrade program, with six of its Signature and Vista class ships to undergo a series of enhancements, including a refresh of staterooms and suites.
Not to be outdone, Princess Cruises announced the order of three new ships on a next-generation platform called the Voyager-class, which will be the line’s largest yet. The agreement with Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri will see the newbuilds delivered in late 2035, 2038, and 2039.
The announcements came at the same time that CLIA announced in its latest Annual Source Market Report that, while cruise was strong and a significant provider to the economy, the local cruise industry was missing out on significant opportunity, with a national action plan called for.
In other news, it was announced on Monday that the Whitsundays is set to gain a new luxury hotel after Sydney-based private equity group Conquest secured the 14,000m2 Coconut Grove site at Airlie Beach.
The company plans to transform the site into a $300 million luxury destination, which will include a five-star resort-style hotel with around 180 rooms and a mixed-use waterfront destination with retail, food and beverage options.
That’s a wrap for this week – time to go and enjoy your weekend even more than you enjoyed reading this piece. Hard to believe, I know.
In somewhat of a connection to the mention of Brett Jardine at the top, my Sunday will be spent taking part in the Pancare Unite 4 Hope Sydney walk – a casual 3km stroll in support of those battling upper GI cancers. As some of the industry knows, it’s something that has affected my family recently.
It is estimated that two in five (about 43%) people will be diagnosed with cancer by the age of 85. That also means, as it has done for Jardine and for my family, it will hit people far younger than that.
I can’t say this strongly enough – get the regular checks that are appropriate for you and if you feel something that is bothering you, get a professional opinion on it.
Enjoy the weekend.
Damian
