U.S. Tourism Without China and New Competition – Brand USA Chief

25.08.2023 - 13:04 / skift.com / Dawit Habtemariam / Brand / Chris Thompson

International travel to the U.S. has not returned to its 2019 peak, though some markets are doing better than others. Germany, for example, likely needs another year to recover, while India should exceed it this year, said Brand USA President and CEO Chris Thompson. None of that, however, will be enough to make up for the loss of China.

Thompson spoke with Skift at the Destinations International Annual Conference about why the U.S.’s travel industry can’t make a full recovery without China, what Brand USA is doing with $250 million in federal relief funds help to jumpstart international tourism, and how the U.S. can stay globally competitive as destinations in Asia improve their tourist infrastructure and marketing.

Skift spoke with several CEOs of the destination marketing organizations from top U.S. tourist destinations. Among the top issues:

Below are excerpts from Skift’s interview with Thompson:

The Missing Chinese Tourist Problem

Skift: How’s international travel to the U.S. doing compared to 2019 levels?

Thompson: As far as our return to 2019 numbers, certain markets are really strong and coming back. So by the end of this year, I think Canada and India will be beyond 2019 levels. Germany and France probably have the next best chance in 2024 to get back to pre-2019 levels. Japan and South Korea are probably going to be the last to come back.

Tourism Economics, which is I guess the respected forecaster for our space right now, they’re still saying 2026 [for a full international recovery]. I think it’s going to be sooner than that, but it’s really mostly due Asia.

Skift: One point you made very clear at your testimony in front of the Senate subcommittee in June was that there would be no real travel recovery for the United States without China.

Thompson: There won’t be a post-Covid recovery without China because it’s our number one spend market. $35 billion is what it was in 2019.

So 2019 we had nearly 80 million visitors that spent about $235 billion. 3 million Chinese spent $35 billion.

Nearly 3 million Chinese spent more than 20 million Canadians. Nearly 3 million Chinese spent more than 20 million Mexican visitors. 

[This year, 849,000 Chinese are forecasted to come to the U.S., according to the National Travel and Tourism Office.]

Skift: Why haven’t they returned to the U.S. at their pre-pandemic level?

Thompson: It’s never been a demand issue. Pretty much they’ve been prevented from traveling. So they still are not allowing group travel to the U.S. So packaged group travel is not coming out of China. It’s just a government decision, and it’s geopolitical. 

I think air service out of China is probably still 10% of what it was pre-Covid.

Some of our industry partners, when I was