Brand USA Says It Is Having Trouble Reaching Its Tourism Goals
Photo Credit: Tourists taking a selfie on a New York City rooftop in 2015. Flickr / Nicolas Mirguet
Skift Take
President Obama's goal of bringing 100 million foreign travelers to the U.S. in 2021 may have been too ambitious given global instability and an unexpectedly strong U.S. dollar. The first challenge is to bring back Canadian tourists.
It looks like Brand USA's stated goal of bringing 100 million inbound tourism arrivals to the U.S. in 2021 may not happen given a variety of global factors.
Brand USA quietly released its fiscal year 2015 annual report earlier this month, and on the organization's quarterly board call its executives wrestled with the realization that tourism isn't increasing quite as quickly as they had anticipated.
In order to play catch up, Brand USA has raised its target compound annual growth rate for inbound tourism from 4.2 percent to 4.8 percent from 2016 to 2021.
"We are significantly under where we need to be for that target [of 100 million visitors by 2021]," said Carroll Rheem, Brand USA's vice president of research and analytics, on the June 9 Brand USA conference call. "The leading driver of our underperformance is the 10 percent decline in Canadian volume."
Financially, Brand USA reported strong support from indust
