US to lose $20b due to fewer Chinese visitors

850,000 tourists expected this year, accounting for less than a third of 2019

Chris Thompson, president and CEO of Brand USA, a destination marketing organization for the United States, said at the Destinations International Annual Convention in July that the US travel industry can't make a full recovery without China.

The US tourism industry hasn't recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Before the pandemic, more than 79 million international visitors to the US spent about $239 billion.

According to the US Travel Association's latest summer forecast, in 2023, the US expects to draw 66.7 million foreign visitors, nearly 16 million more than last year's 50.9 million, but almost 13 million below the pre-pandemic level of 79.4 million in 2019.

Inbound travel volume is expected to reach close to pre-pandemic levels in 2025.

The biggest loss of tourism revenue comes from China. In 2019, more than 2.8 million Chinese travelers made the US their travel destination, spending about $35 billion, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office.

Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a shortage of direct flights between China and the US, mounting tensions between the two countries and other factors, it is estimated that only about 850,000 Chinese visitors will come to the US, fewer than one-third of 2019.

That would mean about a $20-billion loss of tourism revenue from Chinese tourists.

According to the US Travel Association, before the pandemic, China was the No 3 travel market for the US, resulting in a $29-billion trade surplus. The average Chinese visitor spent about $6,500 in 2018, among the highest amount of all international visitors.

The West Coast and New York City are the largest beneficiaries of Chinese tourists. In 2018, 38 percent of Chinese travelers to the US visited California, and 26 percent visited New York.

In 2019, spending by Chinese visitors totaled $3.3 billion for New York City with each Chinese tourist spending an average of $3,000, almost 60 percent more than the average for international visitors, according to the New York State Comptroller's Office.

Top cities visited by Chinese visitors included New York City (25 percent), Los Angeles (23 percent), San Francisco (14 percent), Las Vegas (10 percent), followed by Boston and Washington, DC.

In San Francisco, more than half a million Chinese visitors brought $1.2 billion to the city in 2019.

Travel curbs lifted

Early in August, China announced it was lifting restrictions on group travel to the US and a few other countries. US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo welcomed the news.

China's decision "is a significant win for the US travel and tourism industry and an important step forward to promote the type of people-to-people exchange that is crucial for our bilateral relationship", Raimondo said in a statement.

Marketing organizations for some US destinations have taken their first sales trip to China since the pandemic hit the world. Travel news site Skift reported that Visit California conducted an in-market trade mission in Shanghai and Beijing in late August to meet with top tour operators and undertake agency training.

New York Tourism + Conventions has planned a similar trade mission for September. Through the pandemic, the organization has been maintaining an active social media presence on Chinese social media platforms Sina Weibo and WeChat.

"You don't want to have the 'out of sight, out of mind' thing happen, so we do have some smaller investments in China," San Francisco Travel Chief Marketing Officer Lynn Bruni-Perkins told Skift.

However, geopolitical tensions between China and the US might hamper efforts to attract Chinese tourists. The tensions have been keeping direct flight capacity at about 10 percent compared to 2019.

Frequent news of US mass shootings, US visa backlog and negative sentiments between people of the two countries because of geopolitical tensions have made many Chinese reluctant to visit the US.

A survey last year by Morning Consult showed that only 35 percent of Chinese travelers were interested in visiting the US, behind Europe, the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan and South Korea.

Of that 35 percent, 93 percent said they are worried about violent crimes in the US. The political climate and anti-China bias in the US are the two other major factors that negatively affect Chinese visitors' desire to come to the US.