This year, travel will be looking a little different. With new travel bans in place for the United States under our current government, numerous countries’ citizens have been prohibited from entering our country.

While this will have its own tremendous impacts on families and immigrants, it will secondarily have an impact on how travel in the US is viewed, taken and experienced.

Looking into how the world sees these bans, how the bans are communicated, and how they overall affect the travel industry is very complex. There are numerous Facebook and Reddit groups that were created to spark discourse about President Trump’s recent actions. News outlets are also creating discourse by not only releasing facts about the places banned, timing of the bans, etc., but also releasing opinion pieces by authors inspired to create a conversation.

During the last travel ban by Trump in 2017, according to Nina Zipkin with Entrepreneur, the travel industry made up “8.1% of the US GDP.” This is important to note as at the time, we were beginning to see a dip in travel to the US. A factor in the dropping rate of tourism they saw was in-part due to the “perception of America.” As the way international citizens see the United States continues to change over time, we can continue to look at the impacts that will have on international travel.

The way America has been perceived is continually evolving, and recently it has been in a negative direction. This is especially apparent in TikTok videos where influencers ask random strangers in other countries if they would move to America. The overwhelming majority of these individuals asked for their opinion say no for numerous reasons. While the reputation of America begins to dwindle, our national travel industry may begin to see even more drastic negative results.

Overall, the travel industry heavily relies on vacation travel, business travel, student travel, etc. When there are travel bans in place, there is sure to be an impact on both domestic and international travel, as well as the infrastructure in place at these travel hotspots. When there is controversy happening in the US at the government level, that is also sure to have an impact on international travel. Keeping this in mind, it is important to communicate and see how the bans unfold, how they are communicated to citizens, and how citizens react to all of the changes.

Link to article: https://www.entrepreneur.com/living/what-does-the-travel-ban-mean-for-the-us-tourism-industry/290921