Recent foreign policy events involving President Donald
Trump have consistently impacted travel searches to the U.S., according to an analysis
by the flight-search app Hopper.
While most those events have weakened search demand from the
countries directly impacted by or involved in the event, Trump's summit with
Russian president Vladimir Putin on Monday had the opposite effect.
Among the events Hopper examined were the June G7 conference
in Canada and last week's NATO summit in Belgium, both of which featured sharp
criticism by Trump against U.S. allies. After the G7, Trump tweeted insults
toward Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.
Hopper also looked at search data from the days coinciding
with when the Trump administration policy of separating the children of
migrants from their parents at the border was widely publicized. In addition,
the app examined the impact of the Supreme Court's June 26 ruling in favor of
the travel ban and the July 6 implementation of the Trump administration's
first tariffs against China.
Finally, Hopper examined the travel demand from Russia to
the U.S. this past weekend, with Monday's summit between Trump and Putin in the
offing.
For the study, Hopper analyzed more than 6 billion flight
searches that it collected from GDSs.
In the case of the G7 summit, Hopper found that search
demand for travel to the U.S. from Canada dropped 21% in its immediate
aftermath. Demand from most other G7 countries also declined, including an
overall decline of 2.6% from Europe.
In the aftermath of the NATO summit last week, flight search
demand to the U.S. dropped 5%. Flight search interest from Mexico dropped 8% as
the controversy over the Trump administration's child separation policy peaked.
Likewise, search demand from China slid 8% immediately after U.S. tariffs went
into effect.
Of the seven countries whose citizens are impacted by the
travel ban, Hopper only had adequate search data from Iraq, Somalia and
Venezuela. Search demand from Venezuela stayed flat while it dropped 11% from
Iran and 32% from Somalia.
Conversely, flight search demand from potential Russian
travelers to the U.S. jumped 11% ahead of Monday's Putin-Trump summit.
Looking more broadly, Hopper found that the overall share of
international flight searches from non-U.S. origins that include the U.S. as a
destination has dropped from 35% before Trump's election to 31% during the 20
months since then.