The ‘self-inflicted injury’ to U.S. tourism that’s making some Americans angry and disappointed

People walk near Pike Place Market, Tuesday, June 29, 2021, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Joe Koenen has not seen a single Toronto Blue Jays baseball hat all summer.

Typically, Canadians will flood the streets of Seattle during the summer, but Koenen, who runs Seattle Free Walking Tours (where people pay what they can), said Canadian tourists are almost gone. Streets look emptier to him.

Canadians calling to cancel their tours “explicitly told me that it was because of the policies and the behaviour of our current president,” he said.

As a result of seeing 30 per cent fewer customers this year overall, Koenen has been paying his employees but not himself. This is also the first year since he took over the tour company in 2021 that he has had to put his own savings into the business to keep it afloat.

“I am super-duper angry. I’m also disappointed, but I’m more sad … it’s such a self-inflicted injury,” Koenen said.

Another Seattle tour operator, John Brink, said “usually you kill it that weekend,” referring to the annual May series between the Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners. But the foot traffic wasn’t there this year. The Blue Jays are Canada’s only Major League Baseball team, so while the team is based in Toronto, many fans from Western Canada passionately sport their Blue Jays gear when they come to Seattle each summer.

Brink’s company, Tasty Tours, which guides visitors through food stalls in the historic Pike Place Market, has seen a 50 per cent drop in Canadian customers.

Many Canadians have boycotted taking U.S. trips and buying American products since the spring. That’s when President Trump made false claims and belittling comments about Canada in the midst of a tariff war.

The absence of Canadians has been felt acutely in the United States, especially in cities like Seattle close to the northern border. And Canadians aren’t the only international travelers skipping the US. Some other international travelers have also named recent policies around tariffs and immigration as reasons they’re staying away.

After a promising estimate in December by analytics company Tourism Economics that the U.S. would see about 9 per cent growth in overall international visitation in 2025, the company’s updated outlook now estimates an 8.2 per cent decline, led by about one quarter fewer Canadians visiting the U.S. from January to July, compared to the same period in 2024.

The World Travel and Tourism Council, a global tourism advocacy organization, projected in May that the United States will lose US$12.5 billion in international visitor spending in 2025, the only country out of 184 economies the council analyzed that will see a decline this year.

‘Heading in the wrong direction’

And that pain could stretch beyond this year. Rob Hawkins, from the United Kingdom, changed plans he and his wife had for a 20-day spring 2026 trip to the U.S. to go to South Korea and Japan instead.

“America to me is rock ‘n roll, NASA, speed, jazz, horses, bourbon, hip hop, dance, MTV (the original), Hollywood, gold medals, innovation, strength, respectful (sic) and apple pie,” Hawkins told CNN in an email. “Not the army on the streets and the extreme division currently on show,” he said, referring to the National Guard presence in Los Angeles during immigration raids and in Washington D.C. to take federal control of the local police force.

The Hawkins’ decision to avoid the U.S. for now is one echoed across social media by others around the world.

“It’s unheard of,” said Didier Arino, general director of travel consulting firm Protourisme in France, about an unprecedented drop in interest for travel to the U.S.

“It’s happened before in a country at war, in a country where there was a security risk, or risk of health crisis, but in a normal situation, we’ve never seen this kind of turnaround,” Arino told CNN in the spring.

Beyond citing fears of being questioned at the border, or general opposition to the Trump administration’s policies, visitors from some countries are now facing an added upfront cost of $250 for a new “visa integrity fee.”

“This is a wake-up call for the U.S. government. The world’s biggest Travel & Tourism economy is heading in the wrong direction, not because of a lack of demand, but because of a failure to act,” said Julia Simpson, World Travel and Tourism Council president & CEO, in a statement.

“While other nations are rolling out the welcome mat, the U.S. government is putting up the ‘closed’ sign … This is about growth in the U.S. economy — it is doable, but it needs leadership from DC,” Simpson said.

‘It’s not just me’

For Brink, the Tasty Tours owner in Seattle, American cruise ship passengers coming through the city have somewhat offset the loss in international tourists.

Still, “I personally think without the tariffs and the rhetoric and all that nonsense that we would all have made way much more money this year,” Brink said.

Adam Duford, owner of Surf City Tours in Santa Monica, California, has been feeling the pain of a tourism downturn, too.

“Spring break never happened,” said Duford. “Memorial Day didn’t happen either.”

Duford’s business of running 13-passenger van tours through Hollywood, Malibu and Venice, took a dive this year because of geopolitical forces, catastrophic wildfires and misinformation.

He told CNN that customers were calling to cancel because they had seen a fake image on social media of the Hollywood sign burning down. (It — and all of Hollywood — is still there.) Duford points to misinformation about the January Los Angeles fires, and later, a misperception that protests over immigration raids had taken over the whole city, as examples of why some people stayed away.

Overall, his revenue is down 49 per cent this year. Duford thought this might have been a problem specific to Los Angeles events. But he has also noticed that his typical Canadian customer base that comes during their spring break did not show up this year and learned of businesses in other cities also hurting from lack of tourists.

“It’s hard to be angry, because it’s not just me,” he said. “For all the promises of a good economy — and maybe people were thinking, ‘we’ll sacrifice some culture war things for this good economy that’s going to come from this administration.’ It doesn’t seem like that’s happening.”

Prior to the latest challenges, international tourism to the United States had yet to fully recover after the pandemic. Last year, the 72.4 million visitors from other countries represented 91 per cent of pre-pandemic 2019 figures, according to the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office.

Tourism Economics, which tracks data on domestic and international tourism, now projects that a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels won’t happen until 2029 — three years later than it originally projected.

Domestic tourism has not been strong enough to make up for the loss, according to Tourism Economics.

Neighbours to the north going south

Canadians turning away from the U.S. is particularly worrisome.

More Canadians visit the U.S. than visitors from any other country, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office. Canadians made up about 28 per cent of total international visitor arrivals in 2024.

Instead of going to the United States, “we’re seeing Canadian travel begin to lift toward Mexico, to the Caribbean, even toward Europe in recent data,” said Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics.

“I do think once we turn into the colder months … it would be difficult to sustain this sort of drop. I think that there will be a bit of a bounce. But as long as the rhetoric around this — like Canada becoming a 51st state — as long as that continues, I think you’re going to see a pretty ongoing reaction from Canadians.”

Airlines have adjusted by changing routes that were bound for the U.S. There were about 90,200 fewer airline seats available to book from Canada to the U.S. from April 1 to June 30, compared to the same quarter last year, according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company.

It’s no wonder that Koenen and Brink are seeing so few Canadians in Seattle: Tourism Economics estimates Seattle will lose more than a quarter of its international visitors this year, mostly due to Canadians staying away.

“That’s really a hard thing. I think what we see as our opportunity is to just stand and be ready to welcome our friends from Canada back when the time is right. The time is not right yet,” said Michael Woody, chief strategy officer for Visit Seattle.

Mike Mondello, who owns “Made in Washington” stores in the Seattle region featuring products by local artists and producers, said he realized during the spring news cycle that “this is going to be a different year.”

Without a doubt, he said the “softening” of business at his downtown store has been disappointing. But Mondello said “time heals all.”

“You won’t wake up on a Monday and say, ‘Wow, things have changed.’ It’ll keep inching its way back, I’m pretty sure,” Mondello said.

Woody believes there is an opportunity with the FIFA World Cup in 2026, when his marketing team in Seattle will be collaborating with Destination Vancouver. Seattle and Vancouver are the second-closest geographical grouping of any of the FIFA host cities, and match schedules have been aligned so that spectators can easily travel to see games on both sides of the border.

Woody expects about 750,000 people flowing in and out of Seattle over the three-week period of those games.

Still, Sacks from Tourism Economics warns that across the U.S., the estimated bump in World Cup visitors in 2026 will not be enough to overcome the damage done this year.

‘We’re here when you’re ready’

Canadians have also pulled back from other favorite destinations across the country, including Orlando, home to the nation’s largest cluster of theme parks.

Canadian air arrivals to Orlando were down through May and advance hotel bookings slowed noticeably since April, according to Casandra Matej, Visit Orlando president and CEO. But other visitors from the UK, Brazil and Mexico have still been coming in steady numbers.

Steve Hill, CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, told CNN he recently returned from a sales mission in Vancouver. These are routine trips for his team, but Hill said he personally wanted to attend this time to hear from more than 100 tour operators and travel agents about the sentiment in Canada.

What he heard was not surprising: A certain portion of Canadians will not visit the U.S. right now on principle.

“Trying to get them to overcome that too significantly, I don’t think works very well,” Hill said. “What we told them is, you know, we’re here when you’re ready. We hope you’re ready soon.”

Las Vegas has seen a drop in both domestic and international tourists. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s latest data available from January to July 2025, shows overall visitor volume is down 8 per cent compared to the same period the year before.

Hill said other international tourists have still come in relatively stable numbers. He also believes there will be more Canadians returning in the fall and winter when they tend to escape the cold and enjoy hockey season in Las Vegas.

Both Tourism Economics and several cities’ tourism bureaus told CNN that they urgently need Congress to fully fund Brand USA, a public-private partnership that heads a globally coordinated marketing effort to promote the US as a premier travel destination. In July, Congress reduced federal matching funds for Brand USA from $100 million to $20 million.

Hawkins, the London resident who decided against his trip next year, said he hopes the situation will improve, so that he and his wife can still travel to Yellowstone and Las Vegas in 2027.

“I look at the hard-working Americans just as I do local business owners here in the U.K.,” Hawkins wrote to CNN, adding that he would “hate to see them suffer” because of government decisions.

“I wouldn’t care what political affiliation the owners would have, as I find if you take politics out of any conversation (which I do often), you are pretty much going to have good stuff in common with people.”

Vivian Song contributed to this report.

Natasha Chen, CNN