Chinese tourism to the United States drops for the first time in 15 years in 2018 amid trade differences between both the countries. There has been a decline in the number of Chinese travelers to the US in 2018, down by 5.9% which is equal to 2.9 million visitors, reports National Travel and Tourism Office which collects data from US Customs Forms.
The downfall of Chinese travelers to the US is mainly due to the ongoing friction between China and the United States. It all began in January 2018 when the Trump administration imposed tariffs on Chinese made washing machines and Solar Panels, ever since then there have been trade differences between both the countries. More recently the US has imposed 25 % trade tariff on $200 billion worth Chinese imports and China has retaliated back in a similar way by imposing tariff on $60 billion of Chinese imports. In another development China issued a travel warning to its citizens asking them to take note of the rise in US crime rates and high cost of US health care and the US in return has placed China on Level 2 Warning and discouraged US travelers from traveling to China.
China is a key market for the US when it comes to the number of international foreign tourists visiting the country, China accounts for a huge chunk of the number of international travelers visiting the US. Although overall international travel to the US from across the globe has been declining in the last 2 years, China was contributing pretty decent number of visitors until 2017. For the year 2017 China occupied fifth position in terms of the highest number of foreign travelers to the US from around the world, behind countries like Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom and Japan. China has been figuring in the top 10 list of countries with highest number of travelers to the US since 2011 every year reports couriernews.com.
Chinese travelers are mainly using apps which run on smart phones to book their holidays rather than traditional tour operators. Larry Yu Professor of Hospitality Management at George Washington University backs this, he says “More and more younger people, millennial, clearly like to travel on their own and leverage technology in searching and finding destinations based on social media, consumer-generated feedback, and then make their own decision on where to go.”
The US Travel Association foresees a humungous rise in Chinese tourism in the years to come and predicts that by the year 2020 the number of foreign tourists from China to the US will outnumber every other nationality except United Kingdom.
