President Donald Trump risks setting the U.S. tourism sector on a path of stagnation if he pushes forward with inward-looking policies such as his controversial travel ban, the head of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) warned Tuesday during a speech at the Routes America aviation conference in Las Vegas.
"Travel and tourism thrives by breaking down barriers, not building them; by making it easier for people to travel, not applying blanket bans," WTTC CEO David Scowsill said, according to a press release summarizing his speech at Routes America. "Our sector bridges divides between cultures, fosters understanding across religious and geographic boundaries. It is a massive generator of jobs and economic growth."
David Scowsill
The travel ban, which Trump imposed by executive order on Jan. 27, was scheduled to forbid nationals from seven mostly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days. It is currently suspended under court order, but Trump has said he plans to put forward a revised executive order in the coming days or weeks.
Sourcing U.S. Travel Association data, Scowsill said that strict visa policies that the U.S. took in the aftermath of 9/11, combined with inward-looking sentiment, led to a $600 billion loss in tourism revenues in the decade after 9/11, as international arrivals dropped 9% during the years of 2001 to 2009.
Scowsill urged the Trump administration to keep tourism out of politics, and said that blanket bans on certain countries won't make Americans safer. He also said the administration should rely on technology to strategically share information so that bad actors never make it to a point of entry.
Following the travel ban, which was applied to nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Syria, net bookings from those seven countries were down 80% between Jan. 28 and Feb. 4, compared with the same period last year, according to flight reservation transactions analyzed by travel data company ForwardKeys.
Scowsill said that hotels and travel agencies are also reporting a drop in international bookings to the U.S.