Bienvenue aux Etats-Unis

A new survey of over 10,000 hotel reservations conducted by Booking.com, an Amsterdam-based international online hotel reservation service that is part of priceline.com shows that the number one source country for incoming tourists into the US is France. The Dutch company generated a top twenty list of countries as follows:

#1 France #11 Switzerland
#2 Italy #12 Belgium
#3 Spain #13 Sweden
#4 Netherlands #14 Ireland
#5 United Kingdom #15 Australia
#6 Germany #16 Denmark
#7 Brazil #17 Venezuela
#8 Canada #18 Israel
#9 Japan #19 China
#10 Mexico #20 Austria

While in the US, French tourists “favored New York, San Francisco, Miami Beach, Los Angeles and Boston for their summer trips”.

While that is welcome news for the US tourism industry, the Euro is showing signs of receding from its commanding heights lately as the dollar has strengthened. What has kept US tourism robust, particularly in gateway cities has been the weak dollar. A strengthening dollar that is not indicative of US economic growth but European decline does not portend well for the hotel industry.

Published by

Vijay Dandapani

Co-founder and president of a New York based hotel company for 24 years. Grew the firm to five hotels in Manhattan and also developed a greenfield project at MacArthur airport, New York. Speaker at numerous prestigious forums including Economy Hotels World Asia, Lodging Conference, NYU, Columbia University Real Estate Roundtable, Baruch College's Zicklin School and ALIS. President and ceo of New York City Hotel Association since January 2017.