While the Trump administration issued a revised travel ban
on Monday, new data showed that international flight bookings continued to drop
during the interim period when the Trump administration was working on the
revised ban.
Daily net bookings to the U.S. dropped 4% during the nine
days after the Feb. 17 news that a new travel ban was in the works, reported
travel data company ForwardKeys on Monday. Additionally, forward bookings for
international arrivals in the U.S. are 0.4% behind what they were at the same
time last year.
On Jan. 27, President Trump issued a 90-day travel ban
barring refugees as well as citizens of seven predominantly Muslim nations
(Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen) from entering the U.S.
That original order was blocked in the courts, and last month the White House
said it would rewrite the order to try to address some of its legal issues.
On Monday, the president signed a new executive order
that drops Iraq from the list of countries in the original travel ban, along
with other changes, and is effective March 16.
ForwardKeys reported a 6.5% drop in international travel to
the U.S. from Jan. 28 to Feb. 4.
In the meantime, outbound bookings from the U.S. to a few
countries have dropped since the original executive order, ForwardKeys reported
Monday.
The company said that bookings for roundtrip flights from
the U.S. to India dropped 6%, to the United Arab Emirates fell 19% and to Saudi
Arabia dropped 40% in the four weeks following the initial executive order.