Washington – The Trump administration invited leaders of the Voyage Industry to the White House in May for a federal meeting for the 2026 World Cup, a historic event which, in normal circumstances, would attract massive international tourism in the United States. It was a welcome rally by President Trump and his team for an industry wishing to capitalize on a rare opportunity and capture tourist dollars.
Welcome, at least, until the vice-president JD Vance made a joke.
“We will have visitors from nearly 100 countries – we want them to come, we want them to celebrate, we want them to watch the matches. But when the moment will be passed, they will have to go home. Otherwise, they will have to speak to secretary Noem,” said Vance, referring to the Secretary of Homeland Security and the chief of the borders.
Vance's remarks, although joking, fell flat in a room filled with more aware experts than most of the challenges faced by Trump's days.
“This is one of those moments when you are almost, as, stop helping us,” a participant in the Times said, has granted anonymity to speak frankly.
The stories flood the media abroad of capricious denials and detentions to the American border crossings, which raises concerns among international tourists about to spend the upper dollar on vacation in America which could end up being disturbed or never materializing. The White House erratic tariff policies have shaken consumer confidence that experts reliably say of the follow -up with discretionary expenditure on a trip. And a series of fears in American aviation, associated with cuts at the National Park Service and the National Weather Service, has made planning trips to some of the main destinations in the country less reliable.
In California, tourism destination n ° 1 of the country, international visits should drop by 9.2% during the year, international spending which should drop by 4.2%, according to a forecast Posted last month Visit California and Tourism Economics.
Around Yosemite Nationale Park, one of the most popular attractions in the country, reservations said that “up to 50% in the Memorial Day weekend,” said Caroline Beteta, president and director general of Visit California, Times.
Travel disturbances stories under the Trump administration gave a break to US officials and industry experts not only the immediate economic consequences of a slower summer season, but with the prospects for anemic attendance during the World Cup matches next year and, beyond, for the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028.
“Consumer confidence is certainly important,” said Geoff Freeman, president and chief executive officer of US Travel Assn. “It creates a degree of uncertainty.”
'People should plan in advance'
Unlike a large part of the rest of the country, California is particularly likely to change the trends among tourists in Asia, where tourism has not yet rebounded from the COVVI-19 pandemic as robust as in the Americas and Europe. The commercial flight restrictions on Russian airspace and the strength of the US dollar have not helped, said Freeman.
On the other hand, California benefits from a tourism industry that is more based on national travelers, the 80% source of tourist dollars spent in the state, noted Beteta.
“There is no doubt that there are erroneous perceptions on the impacts on travel experience, reports on the cuts of staff at the border detention,” said Betteta. “Cups at the National Park Service, for example, do not affect the park dealers – and these companies manage most of the services oriented towards visitors, such as accommodation, restaurants, shuttle services and much more. The erroneous perception of chaos in parks is a problem of public relations which can have real consequences. ”
Bus of the Visitors Board of Directors in Yosemite National Park on May 20. The reservations brought around the Yosemite National Park were down 50% before the Memorial Day weekend.
(Carlos Avila Gonzalez / San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
But Cassidy Jones, responsible for senior visits programs at the National Parks Conservation Conservation Assn., Said that the cuts in the parks are tangible and will directly affect the visitors' experience in the coming months, despite the management of the interior department on the mesh of the net.
“There may be fewer open entry doors,” said Jones. “People should plan in advance and not be useful for visitors to the park. Take the optional shuttle. Come with supplies with you, as some facilities can be closed during the times you are not expecting, because they do not have the staff to keep them open.
In April, interior secretary Doug Burgum made an order ordering that national parks are “open and accessible” throughout the summer season, because fears increased that the endowment cuts implemented by the administration could become apparent. However, the cuts of the White House and the hiring are conceded seriously to disrupted a rate of rental and seasonal training for the rangers of the park which generally begins around Christmas, said Jones.
“Some parks may not have the impression that many changes are obvious, but there is a lot of work that is not done in the background,” added Jones. “The order essentially required that even if the parks have experienced devastating endowment cuts, they must put a kind of public appearance that everything is as usual.
Expected flight disturbances
Twenty years ago, about half of the flight delays were caused by uncertainty on weather conditions – a number which has fallen to 33% in recent years thanks to better forecast quality. This progress is starting to reverse due to generalized talent reductions and will be felt by travelers as soon as possible, said Rick Spinrad, who was a director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under President Biden.
The Trump government efficiency program, known as Doge, has eliminated hundreds of positions from the NOAA, including the National Weather Service, and offers a 25% reduction in the agency's budget.
“In the short term, this summer, when people make more trips, we can see a degradation of services. You can see more delayed flights, flights more impacted by weather conditions,” said Spinrad.
But the concern of Spinrad is that the NOAA cuts will soon be felt much deeper, at the local level, among emergency officials, local transport services and public health centers that count on reliable forecasts to trace their work.
“What we are going to start to see, I think, is the erosion of the capacity of the NOAA to provide services to which people had used,” he said.
Spinrad visited southern California at the end of May and was taken aback by the number of people raised from the agency's capacity to continue to predict the events of the atmospheric river, with all their implications on public security, tanks and hydroelectricity. These forecasts are strongly based on the work of a satellite operations establishment which was emptied by the Trump administration.
And the abilities of the National Weather Service to predict phenomena like Santa Ana Winds, which fueled devastating fires in Los Angeles in January, are in danger, with 30 of the 122 weather forecast offices from the agency operating without meteorologists and with reduced technicians, he said.
“I know it will deteriorate, just by definition. Everything will deteriorate,” added Spinrad. “All the predictive capacities of the NOAA will deteriorate as a result of these cuts.”
Mark Spalding, president of the Ocean Foundation, warned that the aviation industry would soon be confronted with disruptions when the NOAA capabilities would continue to decrease.
“We will see effects this summer because they have dismissed so many people and have closed so many activities,” said Spalding.
“There are a lot of services on which many people are counting on what the NOAA provides-meteorological prediction, oceanic observer, early warning of tsunami, surveillance of the Hurricane center,” he added. “There is a lot this summer that could be affected so that we see in air traffic control due to the sudden loss of staff there.”
However, Freeman, of the US Travel Assn., Expressed his optimism for the American tourism sector in the future, noting that he and his counterparts are in “regular communication” with the Trump administration on the opposite winds with which the industry of several dollars are confronted.
“We are not missing challenges in the travel industry,” he said. “I think the image right now for travel is uncertain, at worst.”
“For each challenge you see, there is an opportunity on the other side,” he added.
