Who Wants an American Tourist Now?
Photo Credit: The Cathedral at Notre Dame is a popular destination in Paris that won't be seeing American tourists for awhile. Flickr / Tullio Dainese
Skift Take
Even as America reopens, its failed pandemic response means that tourists will be crossing its borders in and out of it much less for a while to come.
Three weeks ago, Hawaii Lt Gov David Ige said in an interview that he would rather welcome tourists from Japan, Korea, and Australia first in the reopening than mainland Americans tourists. And no one blinked an eye, precisely because it seems the most logical, common sense thing to do — and that in itself says a lot about the state of American tourism in 2020.
Tourism to and from America would normally be a key indicator on how consumer sentiment and the larger economic recovery goes from here, but these are not normal times of recovery as a pandemic still rages on.
As America continues to be the global hub of coronavirus infections and deaths, it is about to become a pariah state of tourism, both inbound and outbound. In fact, The New York Times just reported earlier on Tuesday that the European Union is looking to make official its already widely-known unofficial stance that Americans (and other high-infection nations) won't be welcome this summer.
America has already bec
