BUSINESS
Forecast for
international
travel to the
United States
BY MARK BROWN,
NATIONAL TRAVEL AND TOURISM OFFICE,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
projects international travel to the
United States will continue to experience strong growth through 2021, based
on the National Travel and Tourism
Office’s 2016 Fall Travel Forecast.
According to the current projections,
the United States would see annual
changes ranging from a small decline
to strong growth of nearly five percent.
In 2016 volume is expected to decrease
0.9 percent and thus break the string of
record-setting years that started in 2010.
Volume is expected to resume growing in 2017 and by 2021 the forecasted
growth would produce 94.1 million
visitors—a 21 percent increase—which
would represent more than 16 million
additional visitors compared to 2015.
The latest forecast produces a
compound annual growth rate over
the period of 3.3 percent. This rate is
slightly higher than the rate cited in
the 2015 Fall Travel Forecast due to
stronger growth from Canada, India and
Argentina. It is lower, though, than the
4 percent compounded rate reported in
Courier in the fall of 2014.
Looking at the global travel market,
the United Nations World Tourism
Organization expects world arrivals to
increase around 4 percent over the next
several years, producing annual arrivals
records. UNWTO’s original long-term
forecast reset in 2012 called for 1.4 billion world arrivals in 2020 and 1.8 billion arrivals in 2030. However, actual
growth in 2013 through 2015 was higher
than expected, while 2016 growth will
be somewhat lower and more in line
with original UNWTO expectations.
Ultimately, much of global growth
will result from travel both to and from
Asian countries, which have led the
world in growth in population, income
and—until a few years ago—visitor
arrivals. But developed countries, led by
Western Europe, have actually topped
world-arrivals growth the past three
years, including 2016.
Among origin markets, countries
with the largest forecasted total growth
Top 10 visitor-origin countries to the U.S.
2015 (visitors)
12
January 2017
Rank
2021 (proj. visitors)
Canada
(20,705,000)
1
Mexico
(22,633,000)
Mexico
(18,414,000)
2
Canada
(22,483,000)
U.K.
(4,901,000)
3
China
(5,719,000)
Japan
(3,758,000)
4
U.K.
(5,303,000)
China
(2,591,000)
5
Japan
(3,871,000)
Germany
(2,272,000)
6
South Korea
(2,523,000)
Brazil
(2,219,000)
7
Germany
(2,293,000)
South Korea
(1,765,000)
8
France
(1,991,000)
France
(1,753,000)
9
Brazil
(1,965,000)
Australia
(1,450,000)
10
India
(1,940,000)