Michael,
Thirty years ago I spent four months in Honolulu as a consultant working for AMR Services and later for Hawaiian Airlines and got to watch and enjoy Sumo wrestling televised almost daily from Japan. I don’t think I have seen it since then. I did enjoy watching it.
Harris Herman On Oct 20, 2025, at 5:19 PM, Michael Rurik Halaby via Mifnet <[email protected]> wrote:
It’s been interesting this last week in London as we hosted the second ever Sumo wrestling tournament outside Japan. The first was also London 34 years ago. Lots of goodwill created, locals loved seeing what the wrestlers were doing (double decker buses, crossing Abbey Road, etc. Travel is a force for good. The number of hardcore English sumo fans was mind blowing. Who knew? I even got to meet my daughters’ (years gone by) hero: Michael Rurik Halaby, FRAeS
don't worry. We'll make it up in tariffs. JK
MINUS $12 BILLION...WHY ISN'T THE MEDIA REPORTING THIS??
ROME — The World Travel and Tourism Council was in full celebratory mode at its annual Global Summit earlier this month. It opened with
famed
tenor Andrea Bocelli singing the Italian national anthem, followed by an address from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni focused on the importance of tourism to Italy.
There was a good reason for all the pomp and circumstance.
“Travel and tourism are booming,” said Gloria Guevara, president and CEO of the WTTC. “It’s booming everywhere.”
Everywhere, but with one notable exception: the United States. Tourist spending here is projected to decline by more than $12 billion in 2025. So,
while global tourism surges ahead with double-digit growth, the United States is flatlining. The number of inbound tourists has fallen nearly every month since President Trump was
sworn
into office in January. According to the WTTC, international visitor spending in the country is projected to decline by 7 percent in 2025, making it the only economy in the world to experience such a decrease.
While leaders in Europe are grappling with
overtourism
at popular sites, tourism officials in the United States are scrambling to let the world know that the country is still open despite government shutdowns, political rhetoric,
tariff
wars, shootings, National Guard deployments, expensive visas, and
immigration
crackdowns.
![Visitors at a closed gate outside the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington.]() Visitors
at a closed gate outside the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington.Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg
Washington, D.C.’s tourism office launched a “D.C. is Open” campaign this month, hoping to spread the word that, despite the government shutdown, many attractions are still running. Unfortunately, after the campaign was launched,
the shutdown forced the closure of the Smithsonian
museums. It comes after jarring
images of the National Guard patrolling the city in fatigues with guns were seen around the world. Figures from summer tourism have yet to come in, but the city is expected to see a 5 percent dip in international
tourism this year.
“International travelers are coveted because they stay longer and spend four times as much as their domestic counterparts,” said Kyle Deckelbaum, a spokesman for
Destination
DC.
It’s not only government attractions that are getting hit by the shutdown.
“This shutdown is doing real, irreversible damage,” said Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the
US Travel Association. “Travelers
are facing longer TSA lines and flight delays. Airports are reducing flights, and we’ve seen entire control towers go dark. The longer this drags on, the worse the cascade of damage will be.”
Both United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby and Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian have expressed
concern that a continued shutdown could adversely affect air travel.
“People start to lose confidence in the government and the government’s ability to resolve this,” Kirby said on an earnings call on Thursday. “And that’s going to start to impact bookings.”
Tourism Economics, which tracks data on domestic and international tourism, now projects that a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels will not happen until 2029 — three years later than originally projected.
That’s a long way off for Matteo Gallo, an Uber driver in Las Vegas who was bemoaning the scarcity of tourists on a scorching August evening. He drives after his shift at a casino while his wife stays home to watch their newborn. The city has faced a double-digit
drop in tourism this year.
“The calls just aren’t coming in the way they were a few months ago,” Gallo said. “It’s been tough for everyone.”
A tale of two tourism economies
Strong government support is helping to boost tourism overseas. Many European countries have appointed ministers of tourism and economically buttressed the industry. They’re using those funds to distribute tourists to multiple cities rather than overwhelm a
single destination or attraction. The funds are also used to examine the sustainability and preservation of places that are economic drivers.
This stands in stark contrast to the United States, where Congress slashed the budget of Brand USA, the country’s official tourism office, by $80 million, forcing the agency to lay off staff.
Canada, the biggest international market for U.S. tourism, has slumped the most. Spurred on by Trump’s remarks suggesting Canada become the U.S.’s 51st state and threats of high tariffs, Canadians have continued to stay away.
The latest figures from the National
Travel and Tourism Office show that inbound tourism from Canada dropped 31 percent in July, the steepest decline so far this year.
The shift has been painfully noticeable for
Trisha
Pérez Kennealy, the owner of the Inn at Hastings Park in Lexington. Because the inn has just 22 rooms and is independently owned, Kennealy said she has had the opportunity to talk with guests over the years.
![Trisha Pérez Kennealy, the owner of The Inn at Hastings Park, in the dining room of the inn.]() Trisha
Pérez Kennealy, the owner of The Inn at Hastings Park, in the dining room of the inn.Inn at Hastings Park
“Some of these guests took the time to email and say, ‘We love your property, but we will not be coming to the United States,’” she said. “We’re also very lucky that we’ve had long-term relationships with travel agents and travel professionals. Some of [them]
were very direct with us. They told us, ‘We love what you’ve done for our clients, but our clients don’t want to come to the U.S.’”
She added that international business travelers who are still coming to the United States are not adding additional days for leisure travel, which is hurting retailers and restaurants.
At the Charles
Hotel, which attracts many families of international students because of its proximity to colleges, the number of guests from China has dropped by 30 percent.
“People haven’t been reaching out across the board to tell us why they aren’t coming,” said Adam Sperling, general manager of the Charles Hotel. “Intuitively, it can’t be an accident that tourism from China is down 30 percent, and meanwhile, the president has
been threatening to raise tariffs.”
The slump is also hitting individuals who rent out their homes through Airbnb and VRBO. Alyssa Thompson, who rents out her family’s beach house in
Old
Orchard Beach, said a string of cancellations from Canadian regulars cost her thousands this summer. She ended up renting out the house at reduced rates, and some weeks it simply sat empty.
“In the height of summer, I’d walk around towns that were normally filled with tourists and jumping with activity, and they were a shadow of what they normally are,” she said.
In Massachusetts, a study from Tourism
Economics found that all of Boston’s top international markets, with the exception of India and Brazil, are projected to be down for 2025. Visitation from Canada, which is Boston’s biggest market, shows the largest
decline.
Massachusetts tourism officials have spent years fostering a close relationship with eastern Canada, but the current political climate has tarnished that relationship.
“There’s an allyship between the northeast US and eastern Canada,” said Dave O’Donnell, spokesman for
Meet
Boston. “We have special connections, particularly with the Maritimes and Atlantic Canada, as it relates to culture, heritage, and the economy. But despite that, we’re in this moment. Canadians are saying ‘no’
to the U.S., and it’s in the U.S. as a whole.”
Canadian-based airlines have stopped promoting U.S. destinations, and Canada’s three largest newspapers no longer feature travel stories about the United States. As Canadians are staying away, O’Donnell points out that Boston is also being hit domestically
by Trump’s attack on blue states.
“It’s a double whammy,” he said. “Not only are we losing this significant volume of Canadian visitors, but we’re losing visitors because of the messaging from Washington. Whether you’re talking about our educational institutions
like Harvard,
whether you’re talking about our status as a sanctuary
city, or whether you’re talking about
our
mayor, we’re being attacked.” And last week, the president
suggested
he could take away the 2026 World Cup games from Boston.
California, another blue state that’s been under attack by Trump, has fared slightly better than other states in tourism spending.
“We’re like the winner at an ugly contest,” said Caroline Beteta, president and CEO of Visit California. “Our cultural proposition is a little bit different in California. So it is an easier rationale for people to say, ‘Well, we’re not going to the U.S., but
we’ll go to California.’ While we’re still projecting year-over-year declines in the Canadian market. It’s perhaps not as dramatic as what you’re seeing in the Northeast.”
Right now, all hopes are pinned on 2026. The World Cup could lift the United States out of the international visitation doldrums. The arrival of the World Cup across multiple cities, including Boston, could bring soccer fans
and their valuable dollars back to the country. Similarly, America250,
a year-long celebration of the country’s 250th birthday, is expected to raise awareness (and visitor numbers) in the country.
“There are a few reasons why we’re not visiting the U.S. this year,” said Adam Gold, a professor of literature in Toronto who describes himself as a travel fanatic. “But I think chief among them is your president.”
I hear you, Bob. What other skeletons may be in Platner’s closet? On the other hand……haven’t we thought and said some of those things? He is brash and that’s some of his appeal. I’ll be watching and listening closely as we approach the
primary. It would be good, in my opinion, to have a senator younger than Mills.
Sent from my iPhone
I was behind him initially, but now reading more him:
Beware The Unknown
Earlier this week, I wrote a piece
arguing that Maine Democrats were likely better off nominating Janet Mills, the state’s 77-year-old, two-term incumbent governor, rather than upstart Graham Platner, to challenge Republican Senator Susan Collins in next year’s midterm election.
Yesterday, CNN proved my
point:
Graham Platner, a Marine veteran turned oyster farmer who is now a rising Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, once called himself a “communist,” dismissed “all” police as bastards,
and said rural White Americans “actually are” racist and stupid, according to deleted social media posts reviewed by CNN’s KFile.
… In one deleted comment, in a threadabout
a Black army lieutenant who was held at gunpoint and pepper-sprayed by police during a traffic stop, one Reddit user wrote, “Bastards. Cops are bastards.” Platner
replied, “All of them, in fact.”
Platner also frequently weighed in on police violence, arguing that misconduct was “a
problem that extends deep into the profession as a whole” and rejecting claims of accidental shootings after incidents such as the killing of Minneapolis Black man Daunte Wright, writing,
“F**k these cops.”
… In another since-removed post from2020,
Platner responded to a thread titled “White people aren’t as racist or stupid as Trump thinks” by writing, “Living in white rural America, I’m afraid to tell you they actually are.”
… Platner repeatedly used the word “retarded” to insult other Reddit users, including in one deleted comment that began, “I don’t want to be excessively insulting here … but are you
retarded?”
The quotes above will almost certainly become opposition research fodder by Collins and her SuperPAC.
And this is precisely why, in a toss-up race that Democrats have a reasonable chance of winning, YOU DON’T TAKE A RISK WITH AN UNKNOWN CANDIDATE. Platner has never run for elected office, which means he’s unvetted, and no one knows what skeletons might be in
his closet. That isn’t the case with Mills, who entered public service in 1980 - before Platner was born.
Sent from my iPhone
I was impressed, as well. I have thrown in my lot (for the moment, at least) for Graham Platner for Senate, but anxious to see how things progress. I hope HCR will interview Platner and other candidates in the near future.
Geo, just watched the Heather/Janet interview. She’s impressive with amazing credentials and she (and her team) have quite a track record for the State!
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone
Begin forwarded message:
From: Joy Olsen < [email protected]>
Date: October 19, 2025 at 11:52:40 AM EDT
To: George Atwood < [email protected]>
Subject: American Conversations: Maine Governor Janet Mills
https://youtu.be/XM-eO79906U?si=t67jy4mIy7ATTSEm
Sent from my iPad
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