Was The Trump Travel Slump Just A Clerical Error?

In an announcement made late last week, the NTTO said that it was made aware of discrepancies in the latest round of data it received from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Isabel Hill, director of the NTTO, said that the office will work to make the latest data public as soon as possible.

The National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) has revealed that, due to technical issues, it will not be releasing the latest data pertaining to international arrivals to the U.S., Skift reports. The office said in an announcement late last week that no further statistical information would be made public beyond the details initially released on March 2018.

The office said that it was made aware of some discrepancies in data received from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), stating “NTTO identified significant and increasing anomalies affecting DHS I-94 visitor arrivals data … During this process, NTTO detected a meaningful and increasing number of non-U.S. citizens traveling on visas to the United States being categorized as U.S. residents. Therefore, those travelers were removed from the visitor count of overseas travelers arriving into the United States, resulting in a probable undercount for 2017.”

It’s possible that an undercount could raise doubts regarding the existence of what is known as the ‘Trump Slump’ – the dip in international travelers entering the country around the time of President Trump’s election in November 2016.

Isabel Hill, director of the National Travel and Tourism Office, offered her comments, saying, “The National Travel and Tourism Office is committed to providing accurate statistics on international travelers to the United States as defined by international standards for the travel and tourism sector. NTTO is working with CBP and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to resolve these issues. NTTO will resume publication of these data as soon as possible.”

Tori Barnes, senior vice president for government relations at U.S. Travel, a nonprofit representing the interests of the American travel industry in Washington D.C., was positive regarding the NTTO’s decision to temporarily suspend the data.

“With international inbound travel being such a critical component of the U.S. trade balance and jobs base, the stakes are very high to have an accurate data picture of overseas visitors to our country. We appreciate [Customs and Border Protection] and the Commerce Department’s commitment to getting this right,” Barnes said in a statement.

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