Business Environment Profiles - United States
Published: 24 February 2025
Inbound trips by non-US residents
91 Million
36.3 %
This report tracks the number of foreign arrivals into the United States for leisure and business. The data is sourced from the International Visitation to the United States report compiled by the Office of Travel and Tourism Industries in conjunction with the US Department of Commerce.
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The number of trips to the United States initially turned the corner since the financial crisis. With ever-improving technologies, it is safer and relatively less expensive to travel around the world compared with years past. Moreover, lower trade barriers and globalization have boosted international trade and the number of business trips. According to the latest available data from the US Travel Association, aggregate spending by international visitors is dominated by individuals from Canada and Mexico. Additionally, visitors from the United Kingdom, Japan and Brazil represent crucial global markets for travel to the United States.
As a result of the Great Recession, 2009 proved to be a reversal from consistent gains in inbound trips, with the US dollar gaining strength and the global economic downturn slowing spending worldwide. Travel from Canada and Mexico, along with six of the nine overseas markets, trended downward. Conditions began to improve in the fourth quarter of 2009 and accelerated to a robust recovery in 2010 to 60.0 million inbound trips. The rebound in visitation resulted from strong growth in visitor numbers from emerging economies, which quickly shook off the effects of the recession (Brazil and China) and developed economies that escaped relatively unscathed (Australia, South Korea and Canada).
These trends have continued for the early part of the last decade, with inbound trips outpacing growth in international trips by US residents. However, with the United States driving economic growth in the middle part of the last decade, and some emerging countries experiencing abated growth, the gap between inbound and outbound international trips expanded in 2016 and 2017 as inbound trips were limited in those years. Moreover, political issues also limited travel. Nonetheless, inbound travel to the US increased again in 2018, growing 3.3% that year alone as some political issues stabilized. Geopolitical tensions again intensified in 2019, leading to a slight decline in travel.
Due to the risks associated with the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic outbreak, the United States temporarily banned travel from the Schengen area in Europe at the end of the first quarter of 2020 and many other countries shortly after. As the pandemic spread, this activity weighed on international travel considerably in conjunction with plummeting consumer sentiment. For instance, travel declined to a near-halt in Q2. International travel into the United States fell 75.8% for the entire year in 2020.
While travel slightly rebounded in 2021, it remained much lower than pre-pandemic levels. US travel restrictions remained in effect for much of the year as the country attempted to vaccinate the population and reach herd immunity. Pent up demand boiled over in 2022, which led to a 127.9% increase in international travel into the US. According to the US Travel Association, ongoing delays at US embassies to process visitor visas continues to limit the number of inbound trips. For first-time visitors, the wait time currently averages 400 days in the top 10 source markets for travel to the US. Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) re-implemented the requirement for a negative COVID-19 test for passengers from the People's Republic of China (PRC). As a result, non-US residents' number of inbound trips remained limited in 2023. However in 2024, inbound trips by non-US residents surpassed pre-pandemic levels, rising 22.8%. During 2025, growth will continue, though at a slower rate as inbound trips will continue to exceed levels experienced prior to the pandemic.
Non-US resident travel into the United States will continue growing over the five years to 2030. ...
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