How Will Trump’s Presidency Affect Tourism In The US

How Will Trump’s Presidency Affect Tourism in the US?

The results are in and (like it or not) Donald Trump will be the new President of the United States of America. Although “The Donald” won’t officially move into the White House until 2017 it doesn’t stop us from looking ahead and speculating on how his new role will affect the people of America and the rest of the world.

As hoteliers, we’re mostly interested in how this election result will impact the tourism industry in America.

Well the first thing that’s happened since the result announcement is a plunge in the value of the US Dollar. This could mean an initial boom in tourism in the USA as holidays there will be much cheaper than in the past.

Hoteliers may well be hard pressed to deal with the influx of tourists looking to grab a bargain holiday before the US dollar regains its strength, so it’s important that hoteliers have a system in place to make the booking process as smooth as possible for their potential guests, and also to cope with the fast turnaround of room bookings.

Conversely, according to the Independent the US could see up to 1 million fewer British tourists with many Brits stating that they would rather visit Canada (and plenty of US citizens vowing to cross the snowy border and emigrate North).

This doesn’t look too promising for US based hoteliers, but nothing is set in stone yet as Trump is yet to take up residency in The White House. The best thing to do is to make sure that your hotel website is fully optimised so you can maximise direct booking to avoid losing out those much needed profits to OTA’s.

Ultimately it’s too early to tell how Trump’s presidency could affect US tourism and at the moment the most we can do is speculate, but either way, hoteliers would be wise to prepare for both the best and worse case scenarios.