Marriott International CEO Arne Sorenson is continuing to speak out about how Trump administration policies on immigration and travel can damage travel and tourism growth in the United States, according to a Monday report in The Financial Times.
Sorenson said in a FT interview that more business and leisure travelers could decide to travel to destinations other than the U.S. due to restrictive policies that would impose a travel ban on visitors from some countries as well as uncertainty over restrictions. He added that the strong dollar could also deter international travelers from coming to the U.S.
“The [new U.S. administration’s] actions around travel are not helpful,” Sorenson said. “There’s no doubt about that. There’s no way to anticipate that there will be good news.”
Last month, the World Travel and Tourism Council said there were “early signs” of growing “anti-U.S. sentiment” among tourists with growth in travel to the U.S. growing at 2.3% in 2017, a contraction of 0.5 percentage points compared with last year.
“We are trying to encourage the administration to say: While we might be working on some of these other issue [such as security risks], we actually want to communicate a welcome to the rest of the world and encourage travel,” Sorenson said. “Obviously, that voice does not seem very audible yet, but we’ll continue to work on it.”
Sorenson also said that he knew of “at least a few instances” where corporate groups had chosen to hold meetings in Canada rather than the U.S. due to concerns about the arrival process.