Make New York Post a Preferred Source US international visitor numbers fell further over the summer — despite the World Cup boost — and a told travel boss says President Trump should make America’s messaging clearer and more positive to foreign tourists.
Tourism from abroad fell 2% year-on-year in June, 7% in July and 11% in August, according to figures from Geoff Freeman, CEO of the US Travel Association.
Those figures came as a shock, following the “PR victory” of the FIFA World Cup, jointly hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico this summer.
Speaking to The Post, Freeman said high US travel costs, tariffs and trade disputes, and false rumors about the US among foreign travelers all contributed international tourism to the US declining dramatically.
The number of visitors dropped 11 million in 2025 and is on track to drop another 2 million this year — down 20% from the pre-pandemic high, according to US Travel Association data.
“Some of this is attributed to the cost of travel to the United States. Some of it is attributed to the difficulty of travel for Asian visitors who can’t fly over Russian airspace,” he said.
“Some of it is individuals who are upset about various trade issues and have decided that they’re going to boycott the United States,” he added.
More concerning for Freeman are the visitors staying away due to “inaccurate information they will be detained,” he said.
“They believe that they’re not welcome in the United States, they believe things that are often untrue, and that’s where we need the government to partner with the private sector and send a clear message to travelers around the world that the US is open for business,” Freeman added.
Freeman met with President Trump several weeks ago at the Oval Office, and said they agreed on multiple solutions to improve those figures, with the ambitious target of making the US the most-visited nation in the world with 100 million tourists.
He called Trump’s post about the importance of international travel and making it easier for tourists to come into the country a “critical first step” in turning the decline around.
The second step is to drive national focus on improving underlying processes and perceptions of US tourism, Freeman said.
“The World Cup made all of us feel good. How do we recapture that feeling?” he said.
“We can drive that focus of making sure we’re bringing in the people we want to bring in and making sure we keep out the people we want to keep out,” Freeman added.
The third step, Freeman argued, is to protect funding for promoting US tourism and combating misinformation.
In July 2025, the budget for Brand USA, the public-private organization responsible for helping to pump up international visits, had its budget slashed by 80%, from $100 million down to $20 million.
“This does not seem like an opportune time to be cutting the funding of the organization whose job it is to encourage travel to the United States,” Freeman said.
Such a group could also be used to dispel negative rumors and myths about travel to the US, he explained.
These include the controversial ruling that visitors from countries that don’t require visas must allow border officials to review five years of their social media history.
Freeman and other industry lobbyists have so far successfully stopped that from going into practice, but among many, particularly in Northern Europe, “there is a belief that policy is already in place,” he said.
Another proposed law would require a fee for visa-less tourists of $250, which would make the US the second-most expensive country to enter worldwide, he explained.
This has also been pushed back, but the perception has still got out that the US is a difficult, expensive country to visit, Freeman said.
He called for the need to decouple tourism from debates about illegal imigration.
“The lazy way to address illegal immigration is to let legal visitors be collateral damage,” Freeman said.
“The more sophisticated way is to build a secure border and to have a welcome mat for legal visitors, but that takes a little bit more work, it’s more complicated,” he added.
Freeman pointed to the successful use of the “Visa Fastpass” system to streamline visitors with World Cup tickets as evidence that the system could be made more efficient.
