WTM 2018: ‘Trump slump’ over, says ForwardKeys

The US is seeing a comeback after the so-called ‘Trump slump’ and could be in for a bumper Christmas in terms of UK holidaymakers.

New research was revealed by Forward Keys, which monitors 17 million bookings a day, at this year’s World Travel Market.

International flight arrivals in the US have declined by by 1.5% in the period since Trump took office as president in the US in February 2017 until September 2018, according to Forward Keys, compared with an increase globally of 4%. For the first three months of this year, international arrivals to the US fell by 1%, compared with an increase of 2.7% globally.

From the UK, air arrivals to the US have fallen 3% between January to September this year.

But for this Christmas, holidays to US cities are seeing significant increases following research into Brits’ long-haul holiday choices for the festive period.

Current bookings for Miami are 39.6% up while Orlando is 14.3% up and New York is 2.9% up on last year. Two of the top five long-haul destinations for Brits this Christmas were in the US.

Miami topped the table of the five most popular long-haul Christmas destinations for Brits, followed by Mumbai, Cancun, Dubai, and Orlando.

Olivier Ponti, vice president of insights at ForwardKeys, said that this showed a significant reversal in fortunes for the US this Christmas. He said: “If booking patterns continue we will continue to see more of the same in the Mediterranean with more or less the same destinations getting market share, there is nothing really new there. What is exciting is to see the US back in favour. The US has been performing poorly since the beginning of the year and last year compared to other destinations.”

The Travel Weekly team is reporting extensively from this year’s World Travel Market, stay up to date on our live blog and  event microsite