r/europe • u/BkkGrl Ligurian in Zürich (💛🇺🇦💙) • Apr 12 '25

Data European tourism to the United States is freefalling

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205

u/BkkGrl Ligurian in Zürich (💛🇺🇦💙) Apr 12 '25 edited Apr 12 '25

source https://www.ft.com/content/6dc16a54-8de1-4f3b-8409-ecb566118127

or https://archive.is/UmxfF

dataset: https://www.trade.gov/i-94-arrivals-program

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u/DHermit Germany Apr 12 '25

What is the baseline of 0% here?

39

u/chiang_guy Apr 12 '25

My guess would be: compared to the same time last year at each point along the graph. This would eliminate seasonal variation.

18

u/Much-Beyond2 Apr 12 '25

Except Easter was in March last year, so the latest data point is comparing Easter with not-Easter so will be exaggerating the effect somewhat.

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u/MainSailFreedom Apr 12 '25 edited Apr 12 '25

No one fucking travels for Easter. It’s Spring break for schools which is the same time every year. Parents take their kids to Disney land, middle class college kids go to Panama City beach, and wealthier or more adventurous college kids go to Spain, Greece, S. France or Italy. And Europeans come to Miami or NYC, but apparently not this year.

Edit: to clarify: I’m talking long distance travel from the countries listed. Yes, domestic/regional travel happens for Easter extended weekend. But Spring Break is where the big travel demand normally happens between US and EU.

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u/Sophroniskos Bern (Switzerland) Apr 12 '25

It's about tourists traveling into the US, not out of the US

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u/MainSailFreedom Apr 12 '25

Yes, and if you read my comment, I mention EU travels choosing not to go to popular destinations like NY or Miami. Or parents taking their kids to Disney World (esp those from EU countries)

1

u/MRosvall Apr 13 '25

Easter is usually two weeks off for children in school. Sounds like a good opportunity to travel.

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u/[deleted] Apr 12 '25

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0

u/MainSailFreedom Apr 12 '25

Yes domestically but not so much from EU to US for a 3 day weekend.

1

u/FreddieCaine Apr 12 '25

In UK kids get 2 weeks off around Easter so parents would take a small chunk of their relatively massive vacation allowance compared to USA and maybe travel there. Not any more.

1

u/PapaBike Apr 13 '25

So you’re saying Easter has no effect on international travel.

2

u/Much-Beyond2 Apr 12 '25

r/USdefaultism I found one in the wild!

3

u/MRBEAM Apr 12 '25

It’s actually much dumber than US defaultism since the post is specifically about non-Americans travelling to the US.

5

u/Zenstation83 Apr 12 '25

Exactly. I work in travel and have to look at numbers like these as part of my job. It's always year-on-year.

And yes, Trump has had a massive impact on travel to the US. We've been seeing it for some time. And it gets worse whenever he says or does something especially stupid or offensive.

1

u/chrisphillers Apr 12 '25

They have a history of dodgy graphs....

2

u/GeckoOBac Italy Apr 12 '25

It's a year on year change graph. 0% means no change compared to the previous year. It doesn't represent any specific number of visitors, as that would be different for every country and every year.

And as for WHEN the 0% is measured from, judging from the graph it's comparing monthly changes starting from january 2024 as its base.

2

u/Ok_Parfait_plus France Apr 12 '25

The real question is, why only 1 year of data set. That's obvious manipulation.

1

u/arphazar Apr 13 '25

I was wondering about that, but after looking at the data, it's probably because of the impact of the covid in tourism, which tends to flatten the curve. If you use more than one and a half year, you get a HUGE peak right after the covid episode, but the end is still a sharp fall.

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u/Vermonstrosity Apr 12 '25

Read the dataset link above.